Staff Machine Learning Engineer

At Lyft, our mission is to improve people's lives with the world's best transportation. To do this, we start with our own community by creating an open, inclusive, and diverse organization.  With over half a billion rides and counting, Lyft is solving hard problems in a rapidly growing domain with a lot of data and creative solutions in Rider, Marketplace, Growth, and beyond. While traditional approaches to optimization and problem decomposition are sufficient to disrupt transportation, building a next-generation platform for low-cost, ultra-immersive transportation to improve people's lives warrants modern ML utilizing peta-byte scale data. 

Our highly motivated Machine Learning Engineers work on these challenging problems and define solutions to directly impact various aspects of our core business. Join us in our mission to revolutionize transportation and improve lives by leveraging cutting-edge machine learning technologies. At Lyft, we foster a culture of innovation, inclusivity, and continuous learning, where every team member is empowered to make a difference.

We are seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead the design, development, and deployment of state-of-the-art machine learning systems. This role requires a strategic thinker who can balance high-level system architecture with hands-on technical implementation. You will collaborate across teams to shape the future of ride-sharing by leveraging AI, Machine learning and Data science.

If you are a critical thinker with experience in machine learning workflows, passionate about solving business problems using data and working in a dynamic, creative, and collaborative environment, we are searching for you.

Key Responsibilities:

• Model Development: Design, build, train, and deploy machine learning models for real-time applications.
• System Design: Architect scalable, reliable, and maintainable machine learning pipelines, integrating seamlessly with existing backend systems.
• Collaboration: Work closely with machine learning engineers, product managers, data scientists, and software engineers to align machine learning initiatives with business goals.
• Innovation: Stay ahead of the curve by exploring new algorithms, technologies, and frameworks to solve complex problems and introduce use cases for the team. Critically evaluate problems across business areas.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Utilize data-driven insights to inform and refine machine learning strategies and solutions.
• Mentorship: Provide technical leadership, mentor engineers, and foster a culture of learning and collaboration.
• Code Quality: Write production-level code to convert your ML models into working pipelines and participate in code reviews to ensure code quality and distribute knowledge.

Experience:

• B.S., M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related technical field or relevant work experience.
• 8+ years (or Ph.D. with 6+ years) of experience in machine learning, data science, or related fields, with at least 3 years in a senior or staff engineering role.
• Deep understanding of supervised/unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and advanced optimization techniques.
• Deep knowledge of ML libraries like scikit-learn, Tensorflow, PyTorch, Keras, etc.
• Experience with distributed computing frameworks like Spark, Hadoop.
• Strong knowledge of cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP) and containerization tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Proven ability to quickly and effectively turn research ML papers into working code.
• Practical knowledge of how to build efficient end-to-end ML workflows.
• Proven ability to tackle ambiguous problems and deliver solutions at scale.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills for effective cross-functional collaboration.
• "Engineer at heart" with a high degree of comfort in designing software systems and producing high-quality code.

Benefits:

• Great medical, dental, and vision insurance options
• Mental health benefits
• Family building benefits
• In addition to 12 observed holidays, salaried team members have unlimited paid time off, hourly team members have 15 days paid time off
• 401(k) plan to help save for your future
• 18 weeks of paid parental leave. Biological, adoptive, and foster parents are all eligible
• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• Lyft Pink - Lyft team members get an exclusive opportunity to test new benefits of our Ridership Program

Lyft is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to an inclusive and diverse workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by law. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.  

This role will be in-office on a hybrid schedule — Team Members will be expected to work in the office 3 days per week on Mondays, Thursdays and a team-specific third day. Additionally, hybrid roles have the flexibility to work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year.

The expected base pay range for this position in the San Francisco area is $172,000 - $215,000. Salary ranges are dependent on a variety of factors, including qualifications, experience and geographic location. Range is not inclusive of potential equity offering, bonus or benefits. Your recruiter can share more information about the salary range specific to your working location and other factors during the hiring process.