🚀 Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation Systems

Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation Systems

Position at Launch Potato, a profitable digital media company that serves over 30M monthly visitors through brands such as FinanceBuzz, All About Cookies, and OnlyInYourState.

Launch Potato is a high‑growth, high‑performance remote‑first company headquartered in South Florida, with a global team spanning more than 15 countries.

Why Join Us

Accelerate your career by owning outcomes, moving fast, and driving impact with a global team of high performers.

Compensation

Base salary: $160,000 to $250,000 per year, paid semi‑monthly. Additional profit‑sharing bonus and competitive benefits.

Requirements

• Expertise building ML systems with deep expertise in large‑scale personalization.
• Recognized industry expertise through patents, publications, or significant product impact.
• Proven success architecting ML platforms serving billions of predictions in production.
• Demonstrated track record of 0→1 innovation in personalization or recommender systems.
• Mastery across multiple ML domains including deep learning, causal inference, multi‑armed bandits, and graph‑based models.

Experience

10+ years designing, developing, and deploying large‑scale machine learning systems with a focus on personalization.

Your Role

Establish the technical vision for personalization at Launch Potato, solving the company’s most complex ML challenges and influencing strategy, architecture, and innovation across teams.

Outcomes

• Define company‑wide personalization strategy and architecture, driving alignment across all ML teams.
• Solve critical technical challenges such as cold start, real‑time learning, and exploration/exploitation tradeoffs.
• Design and implement advanced ML solutions using cutting‑edge techniques (e.g., graph neural networks, causal models, bandit algorithms).
• Create and enforce ML architecture patterns, design standards, and reusable infrastructure across teams.
• Lead multi‑quarter, cross‑functional initiatives that redefine how personalization impacts business KPIs.
• Act as technical mentor to senior ML engineers, guiding complex decision‑making and scaling team capability.
• Represent Launch Potato’s technical brand externally through speaking engagements, open source contributions, or publications.
• Champion privacy‑preserving personalization, responsible AI practices, and adaptive learning systems.

Competencies

• Visionary Thinking: Defines the future state of ML infrastructure and personalization strategy, balancing deep technical rigor with strong product impact.
• Architectural Excellence: Designs scalable, modular systems that support billions of predictions and enable rapid experimentation.
• Technical Influence: Drives decision‑making and builds consensus across teams and stakeholders without direct authority.
• Expert‑Level Execution: Navigates deep technical complexity while maintaining execution velocity.
• Mentorship & Leadership: Coaches senior engineers and raises the technical bar for the entire organization.
• External Thought Leadership: Represents Launch Potato in the ML community and contributes to growing its reputation.
• Curious & Forward‑Looking: Constantly explores new approaches to personalization and actively prototypes cutting‑edge methodologies.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Launch Potato is a performance‑driven company that values diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are an equal employment opportunity company and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, veteran status, or disability.