Staff Machine Learning Engineer

GoFundMe is the world’s most powerful community for good, dedicated to helping people help each other. By uniting individuals and nonprofits in one place, GoFundMe makes it easy and safe for people to ask for help and support causes – for themselves and each other. Together, our community has raised more than $40 billion since 2010.

Join GoFundMe as our next Staff Machine Learning Engineer (Pricing). In this role, you will design, develop, and deploy machine learning systems that power pricing and monetization programs across GoFundMe such as personalized donation and checkout experiences, donation yield optimization (one-time and recurring), recurring donor LTV optimization, fundraising goal suggestions, and more. This role requires strong end-to-end execution and deep expertise in building production ML systems (data → training → online inference → measurement) with rigorous experimentation and monitoring.

• Own end-to-end ML systems for pricing optimization, from problem framing and metric definition (e.g., donation yield, conversion, retention, LTV) to model development, launch, and iteration in production.
• Design and implement backend model pipelines including feature engineering, training, and evaluation.
• Build low-latency real-time inferencing services, including API design, caching strategies, model packaging, and deployment on Kubernetes.
• Collaborate with teams to develop instrumentation and event pipelines to capture user and campaign activity required for training and evaluation (e.g., impression/click/submit, donation amount, tip amount, recurring enrollment/cancellation), ensuring schema quality, lineage, and privacy-by-design.
• Apply causal and experimental methodologies to measure impact and avoid biased optimization, including online A/B testing design, guardrail metrics, sequential testing considerations, and counterfactual/causal approaches when needed.
• Develop optimization approaches appropriate for pricing-like problems, such as uplift modeling, bandits, constrained optimization, calibration, and multi-objective tradeoffs (e.g., yield vs. donor trust, short-term conversion vs. long-term retention).
• Establish ML operational excellence by implementing model observability (latency, errors, drift, calibration, business KPI deltas), automated retraining triggers, rollback strategies, and incident response playbooks for pricing systems.
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Design, and Legal/Privacy stakeholders to translate business goals into measurable technical deliverables and ship safely.
• Mentor and set technical direction for other engineers and scientists through design reviews, architecture decisions, and shared best practices for production ML in monetization.
• Employ a diverse set of tools and platforms, including Python, AWS, Databricks, Docker, Kubernetes, FastAPI, Terraform, Snowflake, and GitHub, to develop, deploy, and maintain scalable and robust machine learning systems. (Full-stack experience—e.g., integrating with web clients and experimentation frameworks—is a plus.)

• 7+ years of hands-on experience building and shipping production machine learning systems, with demonstrated ownership of backend services and ML pipelines in a high-availability environment.
• Strong proficiency in Python and ML libraries/frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, plus strong software engineering fundamentals (testing, code review, CI/CD, API design, performance, and reliability).
• Demonstrated experience in pricing/monetization or growth optimization domains preferred.
• Experience designing and deploying real-time model serving (sub-100ms to low-hundreds ms latency targets), including containerization, scalable inference, feature retrieval, and safe rollout strategies (canaries, shadowing, backward-compatible schema evolution).
• Strong data engineering fluency: building reliable datasets and features using SQL, Spark/Databricks, and warehouse technologies (e.g., Snowflake), with an understanding of event semantics, identity resolution, and data quality controls.
• Working knowledge of experiment design and causal measurement for monetization systems, including pitfalls such as selection bias, interference, and delayed outcomes; familiarity with uplift modeling, bandits, or constrained optimization is a strong plus.
• Experience implementing ML monitoring for both technical and business metrics (drift, calibration, segment performance, latency, error budgets) and operating models in production.
• Ability to break down ambiguous, high-impact problems, define crisp interfaces and success metrics, and deliver iteratively with strong stakeholder communication.
• Strong leadership and mentoring skills and a proven ability to raise the bar on architecture, engineering quality, and operational rigor for ML-powered pricing systems.
• Advanced degree (Master’s or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Statistics, Data Science, or a related technical field is preferred.
• Sense of humor is optional but appreciated.

• Make an Impact: Be part of a mission-driven organization making a positive difference in millions of lives every year.
• Innovative Environment: Work with a diverse, passionate, and talented team in a fast-paced, forward-thinking atmosphere.
• Collaborative Team: Join a fun and collaborative team that works hard and celebrates success together.
• Competitive Benefits: Enjoy competitive pay and comprehensive healthcare benefits.
• Holistic Support: Enjoy financial assistance for things like hybrid work, family planning, along with generous parental leave, flexible time-off policies, and mental health and wellness resources to support your overall well-being.
• Growth Opportunities: Participate in learning, development, and recognition programs to help you thrive and grow.
• Commitment to DEI: Contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion through ongoing initiatives and employee resource groups.
• Community Engagement: Make a difference through our volunteering program.

Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or certain US privacy laws may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. Our full notice outlining how data will be processed as part of the application procedure for applicable locations is available here. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. 

We’re proud to partner with GoFundMe.org, an independent public charity, to extend the reach and impact of our generous community, while helping drive critical social change. You can learn more about GoFundMe.org’s activities and impact in their FY ‘24 annual report.

Our annual “Year in Help” report reflects our community’s impact in advancing our mission of helping people help each other.

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