ML Engineer

About The Company
Patreon is a leading media and community platform dedicated to empowering creators and connecting them with their biggest fans. With a mission to fund the creative class, Patreon provides a variety of engagement tools including paid memberships, free memberships, community chats, live experiences, and direct sales to fans through one-time purchases. Since its inception, Patreon has generated over $8 billion in revenue, facilitated more than 60 million free memberships for fans exploring content, and supports over 10 million fans paying monthly for exclusive creator content. The platform's innovative approach has positioned it as a leader in creator monetization, fostering a vibrant ecosystem where creators can thrive and fans can access unique experiences.
About The Role
We are seeking a highly experienced Staff Machine Learning Engineer to join our Relevance team at Patreon. This role is pivotal in developing and deploying content and creator classification systems that enhance discovery, recommendation accuracy, and platform insights. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in natural language processing, topic modeling, clustering techniques, and working with unstructured media content such as audio, video, text, and images. Based in either San Francisco or New York, this hybrid role requires in-office presence two days per week and offers the opportunity to influence core platform functionalities through advanced machine learning solutions.
As a key member of the Relevance team, you will collaborate closely with cross-functional partners including product managers, engineers, designers, legal, and trust & safety teams. Your work will involve building scalable machine learning pipelines, analyzing and preparing training data, conducting exploratory analyses, and deploying models into production environments. You will also be responsible for monitoring model performance, debugging issues, and iterating on solutions to improve relevance and user experience. Your insights will directly impact how creators are discovered and engaged, ultimately supporting Patreon’s mission to empower creators worldwide.
Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in machine learning engineering or applied ML roles
• Expertise in natural language processing, topic modeling, and clustering techniques
• Proficiency in analyzing unstructured content such as audio, video, text, and images
• Strong coding skills in Python and familiarity with common ML/NLP libraries
• Experience with distributed systems, production pipelines, and model deployment frameworks
• Hands-on experience in end-to-end machine learning workflows: data analysis, model building, deployment, and monitoring
• Excellent collaboration skills across engineering, data science, and product teams
• Effective communication skills with the ability to document technical work clearly
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy scalable machine learning pipelines for content and creator classification systems
• Develop taxonomies that enhance platform discovery, recommendations, and search relevance
• Conduct exploratory data analysis and create proof-of-concept ML models to evaluate opportunities
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product, engineering, design, legal, and safety to develop effective ML solutions
• Analyze and prepare training datasets, utilizing crowdsourcing and data labeling techniques as needed
• Train, tune, and iterate on machine learning models using advanced techniques and methodologies
• Deploy models into production environments, writing backend code to support deployment and integration
• Monitor model performance, debug issues, and optimize models based on observability insights
• Translate complex data insights into actionable recommendations for stakeholders
• Communicate technical concepts effectively to non-technical partners and leadership
• Serve as a technical and cultural leader within the Relevance team, fostering innovation and best practices

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity plans
• Comprehensive healthcare coverage
• Flexible time off policies and company holidays
• Recharge days and wellness programs
• Commuter benefits and lifestyle stipends
• Learning and development stipends to support continuous growth
• Parental leave policies
• 401(k) plan with matching contributions

Equal Opportunity
Patreon is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where all employees and applicants are treated with respect and fairness. We do not discriminate based on age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class. We welcome candidates from diverse backgrounds and encourage individuals who are passionate about our mission to apply.