{"id":67193,"url":"https://alion.io/job/abaka-machine-learning-engineer","title":"Machine Learning Engineer","company":{"id":22904,"name":"Abaka","domain":"abaka.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/abaka","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"middle","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Mountain View, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":175000,"max":275000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":275000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Diffusion Models","optional":false},{"name":"Embodied AI","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"MLFlow","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Ray","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2025-11-05T01:12:11Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-05-06","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T14:12:00Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":345,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":1,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":345},"description":"About Abaka AI\nAbaka AI is built on one mission: to be the world’s most trusted data partner for AI companies. More than 1,000 industry leaders across Generative AI, Embodied AI, and Automotive AI rely on us to power their data pipelines. With our headquarters in Silicon Valley-and teams in Paris, Singapore, and Tokyo-we support global partners with fast, reliable, and scalable data solutions.\nOur offerings include a diverse catalog of off-the-shelf datasets (image, video, multimodal, reasoning, 3D, and beyond) as well as comprehensive data collection and annotation services. Whether teams need raw data, curated datasets, or full-cycle data engineering, Abaka AI provides the foundation for building high-performance AI systems.\nAbout the Role\nWe’re hiring our first Machine Learning Engineer in the United States, a foundational role that will shape how Abaka builds, trains, and optimizes multimodal AI systems. You will own the design and development of scalable training pipelines, work directly with our data engineering and research teams, and help drive the technical roadmap for model development across multiple modalities.\nAs an early member of the engineering team, you will influence core decisions around model training strategy, experimentation frameworks, distributed infrastructure, and internal best practices. Your work will directly impact the performance of frontier models trained on Abaka datasets and will help elevate the technical bar for our clients and partners.\nIf you thrive in high-ownership environments and want to shape the machine learning foundation of a fast-moving AI company, this role offers an opportunity to make an immediate and lasting impact.\nResponsibilities\nDesign, build, and optimize scalable machine learning pipelines for multimodal model training, fine-tuning, and evaluation across text, image, audio, video, and 3D data.\n\nWork closely with data engineering and research teams to develop efficient data workflows, including collection, preprocessing, annotation, versioning, and model integration.\n\nImplement and refine training strategies for large-scale AI systems, including vision, video, and diffusion models, ensuring reproducibility, efficiency, and strong model performance.\n\nDevelop tools and automation frameworks that accelerate model experimentation, hyperparameter tuning, and deployment.\n\nIdentify and address performance bottlenecks in data or training pipelines to improve throughput, stability, and resource utilization.\n\nCollaborate with product and infrastructure teams to ensure smooth integration of model outputs into both internal and client-facing applications.\n\nSupport internal best practices for model governance, experiment tracking, and documentation to maintain high engineering standards and reproducibility.\n\nQualifications\nStrong academic background in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, or related fields. Master’s degree or Ph.D. is preferred.\n\n3+ years of experience in applied machine learning or ML engineering, with a demonstrated ability to deliver production-ready models or pipelines.\n\nProficient in Python and ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX, with hands-on experience in large-scale distributed training and inference systems.\n\nFamiliarity with multimodal data processing (e.g., text-image pairing, video understanding, speech-audio modeling) and dataset optimization for model training.\n\nSolid understanding of ML system design, including feature pipelines, data loaders, model serving, and evaluation frameworks.\n\nExperience with modern infrastructure tools such as Kubernetes, Ray, Airflow, or MLflow, along with cloud-based training environments (AWS, GCP, Azure).\n\nExcellent communication and collaboration skills, capable of working effectively across engineering, research, and product teams to accomplish shared goals.\n\nSelf-driven and adaptable, comfortable operating in a fast-paced startup environment, and able to demonstrate strong ownership and urgency in execution.\n\nCompensation & Benefits\nThe base salary range for this position is $175,000 - $275,000 USD annually.\nCompensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work at Abaka AI. This role is eligible for equity, as well as a comprehensive benefits package (health, dental, vision, PTO, flexible work schedule).","description_format":"text","description_chars":4542,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible schedule"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["AI Training Data & Annotation"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2025-11-05T01:12:11Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-08-20T21:58:34Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-08-29T20:33:40Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":6,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.225,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":345,"expected_fill_days":32,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":275000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/abaka-machine-learning-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/abaka-machine-learning-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T16:59:10Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1544,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":22904},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=22904"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fabaka-machine-learning-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fabaka-machine-learning-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fabaka-machine-learning-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/abaka-machine-learning-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fabaka-machine-learning-engineer"}]}