Senior Staff Software Engineer, ML Training

Liftoff is a leading AI-powered performance marketing platform for the mobile app economy. Our end-to-end technology stack helps app marketers acquire and retain high-value users, while enabling publishers to maximize revenue across programmatic and direct demand.

Liftoff's solutions, including Accelerate, Direct, Monetize, Intelligence, and Vungle Exchange, support over 6,600 mobile businesses across 74 countries in sectors such as gaming, social, finance, ecommerce, and entertainment. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Redwood City, CA, Liftoff has a diverse, global presence.

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Training & Serving Team, you will:

• Design and build scalable, resilient infrastructure for training and serving deep learning models, ensuring millisecond-level latency and high availability under heavy traffic.
• Collaborate with ML modeling and platform teams to productionize cutting-edge neural network models, ensuring infrastructure meets the demands of evolving model architectures and workloads.
• Instrument and monitor system performance with detailed observability tooling, proactively identifying bottlenecks in model inference, data throughput, or distributed training.
• Profile and optimize ML model performance across the training and inference stack.
• Build internal tooling and automation to accelerate the ML experimentation cycle — including experiment tracking, model versioning, reproducibility tools, and rapid feedback loops for researchers and engineers.
• Utilize vendor-based products (AWS, etc.), open-source technologies (PyTorch, PySpark, etc.) and in-house tooling.

Requirements:

• Very strong coding ability (any backend language)
• Strong core CS fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, architecting systems)
• 12+ years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; 8+ years and a Master's degree
• Experience building Machine Learning tooling or platforms, in particular when applied to large scale problems
• Experience with NVIDIA Triton, PyTorch, or PySpark is a big plus
• Experience working in high-growth startup atmosphere is a plus
• A passion for quality and excellence, and the ability to temper it when necessary to ship

Nice to haves:

• Previous experience in ad-tech
• Python, Golang
• Experience with CUDA

Working at Liftoff is fast-paced, fun, and challenging, and we thrive on innovation. Come join our team and help shape the future of the mobile app ecosystem. If this role sounds interesting to you, we would love to hear from you

Locations:
This role is eligible for full-time remote work preferably in Pacific Standard Time Zone in one of our entities/states and Canada: CA, CO, NV, OR, UT, and WA.

Travel Expectations:
We offer several opportunities for in-person team gatherings, including but not limited to project meetings, regional meetups, and company-wide events. We expect our employees to attend these gatherings at least once per quarter. These gatherings provide essential opportunities for collaboration, communication, and team building.

Compensation:
Liftoff offers all employees a full compensation package that includes equity and health/vision/dental benefits associated with your country of residence. Base compensation will vary based on candidate's location and experience.

The following are our base salary ranges for this role:

• SF Bay Area, Los Angeles/Orange County, NYC, Seattle: $285,000 - $345,000
• Olympia, San Diego, Santa Barbara: $265,000 - $320,000
• All other cities and towns in our approved states: $265,000 - $320,000

We use Covey as part of our hiring and/or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process, we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate-submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound on January 22, 2024.

Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey here.

Liftoff offers a fast-paced, collaborative, and innovative work environment where employees are empowered to grow and make an impact. We're shaping the future of the mobile app ecosystem—join us and help accelerate what's next.

Liftoff's compensation strategy includes competitive salaries, equity, and benefits designed to support employee well-being and performance. We benchmark compensation based on role, level, and location to ensure fairness and market alignment. Benefits may include medical coverage, wellness stipends, and additional perks based on your country of residence.

Liftoff is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and applicants regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, age, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Agency and Third Party Recruiter Notice:
Liftoff does not accept unsolicited resumes from individual recruiters or third-party recruiting agencies in response to job postings. No fee will be paid to third parties who submit unsolicited candidates directly to our hiring managers or Recruiting Team. All candidates must be submitted via our Applicant Tracking System by approved Liftoff vendors who have been expressly requested to make a submission by our Recruiting Team for a specific job opening. No placement fees will be paid to any firm unless such a request has been made by the Liftoff Recruiting Team and such a candidate was submitted to the Liftoff Recruiting Team via our Applicant Tracking System.