# Staff Software Engineer, Machine Learning

**Company:** [WHOOP](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/whoop)
**Location:** Boston, MA
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Python, Machine Learning, Distributed Systems, Ml Inference, APIs, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, CI/CD, Observability
**Posted:** 2026-06-17

> Staff-level engineer building and operating production ML inference systems, data pipelines, and backend services that deliver personalized health insights from physiological data at scale.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain production services that deliver health features, in close collaboration with Applied ML Scientists and ML Research Engineers.
- Lead the architecture and development of scalable ML inference systems, APIs, and backend services optimized for reliability, latency, and cost efficiency.
- Collaborate with Data Platform teams to improve ML data pipelines, tooling, feature delivery systems, and validation frameworks that support robust model performance.
- Work alongside Applied ML Scientists to translate research prototypes into production systems that can be deployed, monitored, and operated at scale.
- Partner with the Digital Health team on algorithmic performance specifications, validation and verification planning, and the design of SPA or algorithm validation studies.
- Drive operational excellence through monitoring, observability, incident response, and reliability improvements for ML-powered services.
- Collaborate with researchers, product teams, and engineering stakeholders to align platform investments with health insights and member impact.
- Participate in on-call rotations for ML and data services, ensuring uptime, performance, and reliability in production environments.
- Provide technical leadership through architecture reviews, engineering standards, mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration.

## Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, or a related field (Master's preferred).
- 7+ years of professional experience as a Software Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, Platform Engineer, or related role building large-scale distributed systems and/or production ML platforms.
- Strong coding skills in Python with a track record of writing clean, well-tested, production-quality code.
- Strong fundamentals in backend and service development, including APIs, distributed systems, reliability, monitoring, debugging, and performance optimization.
- Experience designing, deploying, and operating ML inference systems at scale (real-time streaming and/or large-scale batch).
- Experience building and maintaining distributed systems, event-driven architectures, or high-throughput data processing platforms.
- Experience deploying and operating services on cloud platforms (AWS or GCP), including Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, and observability tooling.
- Experience partnering with data science or machine learning teams to productionize models, algorithms, and data-driven features.
- Familiarity with applied machine learning concepts, model evaluation, experimentation, and performance validation.
- Demonstrated technical leadership through architecture and design ownership, setting engineering standards, and raising quality through reviews and mentorship.
- Proven track record driving measurable improvements in system performance, reliability, scalability, and/or cost at scale, while influencing cross-functional technical direction.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Experience processing time-series, streaming, sensor, wearable, physiological, or other high-volume data sources.
- Experience developing software in a regulated or quality-managed environment (SaMD, medical device, healthcare, fintech, or similarly regulated domains).

## Similar roles

- [Member of Technical Staff](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/dd7c8bc4-741a-45d5-91a8-e6b1c4ad67e0) - xAI - Palo Alto, CA - $180k – $440k/yr
- [Staff Software Engineer, AI & App Experience](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/78128221-8199-41cd-9c63-502d3f61d603) - Chime - New York, NY - $223k – $308k/yr
- [Staff + Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Inference Launch Engineering](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/18b08a6a-5359-4836-b72e-c641fa718b04) - Anthropic - San Francisco, CA - $320k – $485k/yr
- [Senior Staff Software Engineer, Legal Automation](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/7870d3e1-ebec-4f7b-9ae5-c62926a06d6e) - Coinbase - Remote - $254k – $299k/yr
- [Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Computer Vision](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/2969c5c0-8479-43bb-b9b6-f8df93b528d7) - Pinterest - San Francisco, CA - $189k – $390k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/c4697437-6a56-4910-9623-451280a1a444
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/c4697437-6a56-4910-9623-451280a1a444