{"id":202834,"url":"https://alion.io/job/thorn-staff-machine-learning-engineer","title":"Staff Machine Learning Engineer","company":{"id":456208,"name":"Thorn","domain":"thorn.org","url":"https://alion.io/company/thorn-2","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"staff","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":171000,"max":235750,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":235750},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"NLP","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":true},{"name":"Diffusers","optional":true},{"name":"FAISS","optional":true},{"name":"Hugging Face","optional":true},{"name":"Keras","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"ONNX","optional":true},{"name":"ONNX Runtime","optional":true},{"name":"OpenCV","optional":true},{"name":"Pandas","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":true},{"name":"Scikit-learn","optional":true},{"name":"SciPy","optional":true},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true},{"name":"Transformers","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-04T05:04:30Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-23","last_verified_at":"2026-10-06T19:23:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":32,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":32},"description":"At Thorn, our cause is our code. We are a nonprofit whose mission of defending children from sexual exploitation and abuse is deeply embedded within our core-a shared code that drives us to do challenging work with resilience and determination.\nHere, you’ll work and grow among the best hearts and the best minds in tech, data, and business alongside our network of independent partners, NGOs, and law enforcement agencies. Together, we’re focused on building technology that protects children’s futures. We are looking for dynamic problem solvers with the desire to help address some of today’s toughest issues. You'll collaborate with a diverse group of peers in a remote environment centered on wellness, care, and compassion.\nIn 2019, we took the stage atTED and shared our audacious goal of eliminating child sexual abuse material from the internet. Come join us to help make this goal a reality and build a world where every child can be safe, curious, and happy.\nAbout the Role\nAs a Staff ML Engineer at Thorn, this role will design, build, deploy and maintain world class models, classifiers and algorithms to increase Thorn’s capabilities to achieve our mission of the elimination of child sexual exploitation. They will be the go-to expert in one or more domains of machine learning and provide critical guidance to multiple teams across legal, engineering, product, business development and external affairs. They will directly contribute to the Machine Learning team’s critical function in Thorn’s mission - building automated solutions that:\nReduce the time it takes to identify a child sexual abuse victim, elevating the most vulnerable and high risk victims from an ocean of online content\nEnable the removal of child sexual abuse material from the internet, finding known and new content\nPrevent online abuse from happening in the first place, detecting abusive content before it spreads\nThey are responsible for ensuring that their work is high quality, as well as mentoring other ML Engineers. They will thrive in highly ambiguous problem spaces and be able to creatively design and build scalable solutions with minimum direction. They will demonstrate persistence and strong technical expertise to navigate legal, product, and technical constraints. They are responsible for partnering with the engineers, product manager and designers across different products to drive requirements, as well as any and all relevant external partners, taking into account all stakeholder needs.\nWhat You’ll Do\nOwn end-to-end model development: design, build, test and maintain machine learning systems and algorithms\nLead machine learning system designs, set engineering standards, lead technical meetings and proactively engage and mentor other engineers\nHelp debug, do code review, and support general machine learning initiatives led by other members of the Machine Learning team.\nDefine data sourcing and labeling strategy for your technical domain, proactively identifying future data needs and partnering with the Sr. Technical Program Manager to drive planning and prioritization\nWork closely with specialists at Thorn to create data labeling guides and support labeling efforts. This may involve engaging with sexually explicit material that is not child sexual abuse material\nLook for opportunities to streamline and reuse work, proactively identifying cross-team dependencies. Anticipate technical risks across ML systems, define architectural guardrails, establish best practices for scalability and reliability\nRepresent Thorn as a technical thought leader at conferences and other external forums, advancing the field and strengthening strategic partnerships\nCollaborate with engineers, product managers, product owners, and designers to drive requirements, define scope of work, engage with users, and translate user needs into features and deliverables\nCollaborate with engineers on product teams to maintain and deploy models, algorithms and model serving infrastructure\nLook for opportunities, in collaboration with the Sr. Technical Program Manager, to improve the innovation -> impact cycle across product, academic collaborations, and other external partnerships\nBuild relationships and collaborate with external partners\nLook for opportunities to improve systems, author tools and introduce policies/patterns that raise productivity for the Machine Learning team\nClearly communicate and document problem formulation, feature/model design, training, and evaluation results to technical and non-technical audiences\nIdentify new problem spaces within online child safety. Stay abreast of technical developments and breakthroughs with an eye towards applying solutions to our issue space.\nDrive roadmap planning and cadence of maintenance vs. new feature development for your areas of ownership\nConduct data analysis as needed to improve cross-functional understanding\nCollaborate closely with Product and Engineering during planning, software design, model development, and time-sensitive customer support efforts.\nWhat We’re Looking For\nYou have a commitment to putting the children we serve at the center of everything you do\nYou have a willingness to learn about online child safety and victim identification.\nYou have 8+ years background in machine learning and/or artificial intelligence, with 3+ years experience in building production-scale computer vision and/or NLP machine learning systems and pipelines \nYou have a Ph.D or master’s degree in a quantitative field, or equivalent professional experience. \nYou have an ability and interest in learning and adopting new technologies quickly\nYou can work with ambiguity, shifting requirements and collaborate with cross-functional internal and external stakeholders\nYou have a passion for machine learning and an aptitude to work in a collaborative environment, can demonstrate empathy for our team and strong advocacy for our users, while balancing the vision and technical constraints of engineering. Success on this team requires humility, curiosity, and a willingness to both teach and learn.\nYou excel at identifying unique opportunities and translating them into scalable solutions that align cross-functional stakeholders around a clear, compelling, and actionable vision\nYou communicate clearly, efficiently, and thoughtfully. We’re a highly-distributed team, so written communication is crucial\nTechnologies We Use (for relevant roles)\nAWS\nPython\nPandas\nPyTorch\nscikit-learn/scipy\nTerraform\nCI/CD Pipelines\nTensorflow with Keras\nHugging Face Transformers/Diffusers\nOpenCV\nFAISS or other vector stores\nONNX/onnxruntime\nKubernetes\nCompensation and Benefits\nA reasonable estimate of the compensation range for this role is $171,000-$235,750/year. This range takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to location; skill sets; experience and training; licensure, and certifications.\nOur remote-first work model is structured around working from home most of the time. But, there will be times that employees are expected to travel. For example, Thorn may host company-wide gatherings, and smaller teams may hold in-person meetings and team-building events, or require attendance at specific conferences.\nAt Thorn, we know that great people make a great organization. We value our people and offer employees a broad range of benefits. Learn more about what working at Thorn can mean for you.\nThorn is strengthened by the wide range of experiences and perspectives on our team. We value the diversity of our professional backgrounds, subject matter expertise, cultures, and perspectives because they help us solve complex problems and serve our mission more effectively. We hire based on merit, qualifications, and organizational need, and we are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all employees can thrive.\nAll qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.\nThorn is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. We provide reasonable accommodations to ensure candidates and employees with disabilities can fully participate in the application process, perform essential job functions, and access all the benefits and privileges of employment. If you need an accommodation, please contact us at \nKnow Your Rights: Workplace discrimination is illegal","description_format":"text","description_chars":8531,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":true},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","Law Enforcement"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-04T20:12:02Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-09-19T10:15:31Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-09-19T23:18:29Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":35,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.63,"p_room":0.55,"age_days":32,"expected_fill_days":26,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-10-06T05:45:30Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":235750,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/thorn-staff-machine-learning-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/thorn-staff-machine-learning-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-06T21:52:48Z","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","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1815,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":3185,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-07T00:00:00Z"}},"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":456208},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=456208"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fthorn-staff-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%2Fthorn-staff-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%2Fthorn-staff-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/thorn-staff-machine-learning-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthorn-staff-machine-learning-engineer"}]}