Define the technical future of Quora’s recommendation ecosystem as a Staff Machine Learning Engineer in a remote-first environment.
Posted by employer 9 hours ago
First seen on Joblaze 2 hours ago
Last verified on the company career page 2 hours ago
Skills & Technologies
What you'll build
- Set the technical direction for Quora’s home feed recommendation systems
- Lead the highest-impact projects across the recommender stack
- Drive measurable improvements in user engagement and content quality
- Take end-to-end ownership of ML systems
- Identify new opportunities to apply machine learning
Must have
- 6+ years of professional software development experience in machine learning
- 4+ years of professional experience building and optimizing Home Feed recommendation systems
- Deep knowledge of the full recommender stack
- Deep understanding of mathematical foundations of machine learning algorithms
- Experience leading large-scale ML projects end-to-end
Nice to have
- 6+ years of experience writing Python or C++ code
- Hands-on experience deploying and running generative models at scale
- Background in notifications, email/digest recommendations
- Publications at venues like RecSys, KDD, NeurIPS, or ICML
Practical constraints
- Availability for meetings during coordination hours (Mon-Fri: 9am-3pm Pacific Time)
Role intensity
70% hands-on coding
AI in the day-to-day
We leverage AI-assisted development to accelerate our shipping velocity.
Requirements
- Experience
- 6+ years
- Education
- Bachelor's degree
Not disclosed in this posting: visa sponsorship.
Benefits
Joblaze summary
In this role, the Staff Machine Learning Engineer focuses on enhancing Quora's recommendation systems, particularly for the home feed, by leading projects that involve candidate generation, ranking, and integrating advanced models. The position requires extensive experience in machine learning and a deep understanding of recommendation algorithms, with a strong emphasis on Python or C++. This role is ideal for seasoned professionals with a background in social media or user-generated content platforms, who are comfortable taking ownership of large-scale ML projects and mentoring junior engineers.
Joblaze insights
- Listed today — first seen on Joblaze October 23, 2026. Last confirmed on Quora's careers page October 23, 2026.
- Salary band is above the typical range for AI/ML roles (median ~$190,000).
- Starts above 48% of 122 comparable staff ai/ml roles that list Python we track (median $224,000 across 42 companies). See Python salary trends
- Python appears in 44.8% of 482 comparable staff ai/ml roles; Recommendation Systems appears in 0.2% of 482 comparable staff ai/ml roles.
Quick facts
- Is the Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation Systems - Quora (Remote) role remote?
- Yes — Quora lists this as a fully remote position.
- What's the salary range?
- Quora lists $219,989–$320,613 for this role.
- How much experience is required?
- At least 6 years of relevant experience for this Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation Systems - Quora (Remote) role.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: C++, Machine Learning, Python, Recommendation Systems.
- What seniority level is this role?
- Quora targets staff-level candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation Systems - Quora (Remote) role at Quora.
From the original posting
[Quora is a privately held, "remote-first" company. This position can be performed remotely from multiple countries around the world. Please visit careers.quora.com/eligible-countries for details regarding employment eligibility by country.]
Quora: a global knowledge sharing platform with millions of monthly unique visitors, bringing people together to share insights on various topics and providing a unique platform to learn and connect with others.
About the Team and Role:
At Quora, machine learning drives nearly every aspect of our product, and our lean, high-velocity engineering team tackles complex, high-impact challenges daily. We thrive in a remote-first culture built on absolute autonomy, continuous learning, and bold experimentation.
We are looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to define the technical future of Quora’s recommendation ecosystem. In this role, you will own the technical direction for feed ranking and retrieval, lead our highest-impact modeling bets, and pioneer the integration of LLMs and generative models to redefine how we understand and rank content. Beyond the home feed, you will also scale recommendation surfaces like notifications and digest emails, while architecting the underlying tools and abstractions that empower our entire engineering organization.
This is a high-leverage, hands-on IC role with organization-wide scope. You will write production code, mentor rising talent, and actively shape how our team leverages AI-assisted development to accelerate our shipping velocity.
Responsibilities:
Set the technical direction for Quora’s home feed recommendation systems
Lead the highest-impact projects across the recommender stack, from candidate generation and retrieval to ranking, re-ranking, and multi-objective optimization
Drive measurable improvements in user engagement and content quality through well-designed online experiments
Take end-to-end ownership of ML systems, including data pipelines, candidate extraction, feature engineering, model training, and production integration
Identify new opportunities to apply machine learning to different parts of the Quora product
Partner with product, data science, and infrastructure teams to align on priorities and tradeoffs
Mentor engineers and lead by example, raising the bar for code quality, modeling rigor and AI assisted dev velocity
Minimum Requirements:
Availability for meetings and impromptu communication during Quora's “coordination hours" (Mon-Fri: 9am-3pm Pacific Time)
6+ years of professional software development experience in machine learning
4+ years of professional experience building and optimizing Home Feed recommendation systems for social media and user-generated content platforms.
Deep knowledge of the full recommender stack: candidate generation, retrieval, ranking, re-ranking, embeddings, and multi-objective optimization.
Deep understanding of mathematical foundations of machine learning algorithms
Experience leading large-scale ML projects end-to-end with measurable outcome
Strong communication and interpersonal skills
BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science
Preferred Requirements:
6+ years of experience writing Python or C++ code
Hands-on experience deploying and running generative models at scale
Background in notifications, email/digest recommendations, or growth and lifecycle modeling
Flexible and positive team player
Publications at venues like RecSys, KDD, NeurIPS, or ICML.
Passion for Quora's mission and goals
US candidates only: For US based applicants, the salary range is $219,989 - $320,613 USD + equity + benefits.
Canada candidates only: For Toronto and Vancouver based applicants, the salary range is $282,469 - $329,337 CAD + equity + benefits. For all other locations in Canada, the salary range is $263,638 - $307,381 CAD + equity + benefits.
Job Applicant Privacy Notice: https://careers.quora.com/quora-global-job-applicant-privacy-notice
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