Senior Software Engineer - Search &Recommendations - remote

Posted 3 years ago

THE COMPANY

Outschool's mission is to inspire kids to love learning. We achieve this by linking learning to kids’interests, connecting them with other classmates who share their passions, and giving them the autonomy to pick their own paths. Our small group classes meet over live video chat with teachers who celebrate their unique strengths and empower all learners to develop confidence and a strong sense of self.

We're also focused on removing barriers for historically underserved learners who face systemic challenges to their success. In 2020, we started Outschool.org and began offering financial assistance to families in need. We are currently creating an Educator Endowment Fund to appreciate the teachers who are so central to our mission of inspiring kids to love learning.

We believe that diversity drives learning. To meet our mission, we encourage, support, and celebrate different ideas, perspectives, and backgrounds. As a fully distributed (remote) team, we challenge one another to find the most effective way to empower learners, teachers, and parents. Your name, race, religion, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, and age are not barriers;they are why we want to work with you. We invite talented and creative candidates who value the importance of nurturing a child's boundless curiosity to join us on this journey.

The pandemic has been challenging for families all over the globe. We acted quickly and worked together to provide quality resources to learners, parents, and teachers in the past year. As communities worldwide rethink their approach to education, Outschool will continue to innovate and provide kids with unique opportunities to explore their passions.

Earlier this year, Techcrunch recognized Outschool as the newest EdTech unicorn. We've also been named Fast Company’s most innovative EdTech company in the world, and one of the top ten best startups for women from Elpha.

THE ROLE

Outschool today is offering over 140,000 virtual, small-group classes to students between the ages of 3 and 18. We are looking for Machine Learning engineers to super-charge our ability to recommend classes to our community of learners, parents, school, and more. Search and recommendations drive a huge portion of our enrollments, but we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. Your role will be deploying models and algorithms to help kids find the classes that ignite their love of learning.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

  • Train and deploy models to production. We expect ML engineers to write production level code which trains models, validate their efficacy across relevant metrics, and work within product teams to deploy them to production.
  • Define and develop ML tooling. Because it’s early days for ML at Outschool, we need engineering leaders to identify opportunities in our development environment, recommend solutions, and work with infrastructure to roll out those improvements. Build or buy -- whatever it takes to give ML engineers the tools to do their best work.
  • Mentor and set technical direction. We are making a long term investment in ML. There are incredible opportunities to learn what makes education work by leveraging our unique data of millions of class-hours, searches, and interactions. We are hiring leaders who can help us spot opportunities, ensure ethical practices, and build a team.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

  • 8+ years of industry or academic work in software engineering (can include Masters or PhD)
  • 2+ years of developing in-production ML models
  • Experience using statistical techniques to develop and analyze metrics, features, and experiments
  • Communication skills to work with a wide range of ML sophistication, from user-facing product managers to interviewing other experts
  • Understanding of the ML ecosystem, and ability to discuss trade-offs with infrastructure leaders

OUTSCHOOL CARES:

  • Shared Financial Success: Competitive salaries, stock options, and investment plans that make saving for retirement easier.
  • Health &Wellness: Comprehensive health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance coverage options for employees and their families. Our medical benefits include fertility and family planning coverage. We also provide employees with online access to coaching and therapy sessions through our partner, ModernHealth.
  • PTO &Family Benefits: PTO and family leave enable our team to take the time that we need to recharge, relax, and spend time with family and friends.
  • Fully Distributed: With a team distributed across the US and Canada, we create a remote culture through expensable weekly meals, virtual events, expensable home office setup, and internet allowance.
  • Lifelong Learners: Annual budgets to self-direct our professional development as well as DEI learning. There’s also a budget for employees’learners to take classes on Outschool!
  • Community Impact: Outschool matches employee donations to established charities and has committed to donating $3M to Outschool.org non-profit programs.

Outschool is an equal opportunity employer. We view diversity as a moral imperative and competitive advantage. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We plan and structure our interviews to directly assess skills and experience.

Outschool is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to disabled veterans and applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance due to a disability, you may contact us at recruiting@outschool.com.

Must be a citizen or legal resident of the U.S. or Canada and reside in U.S. or Canada.