Staff ML Engineer

About the Product

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About the Role

We are looking for our first Staff Machine Learning Engineer to establish and lead our machine learning initiatives. This is a critical, foundational role where you will have the unique opportunity to shape the future of data science and ML at Niche. You will be responsible for identifying high-impact opportunities, designing, building, and deploying machine learning models that directly drive business growth and enhance user experience across our platform.

We are looking for a highly skilled, hands-on practitioner who is passionate about translating business challenges into data-driven solutions. You build, you code, you ship, you measure. You have a proven history of deploying ML models into production environments that have delivered tangible results. You possess the experience and desire to mentor future ML hires and establish best practices as our capabilities grow.

What You Will Do

• Identify & Prioritize : Collaborate closely with product, engineering, data analytics, and business stakeholders to identify and prioritize the most impactful ML opportunities that align with Niche’s strategic goals. Our first area of focus is our Recommendations, which includes matching students with the right schools
• Design & Build : Lead the end-to-end development of machine learning models – from data collection and feature engineering to algorithm selection, training, tuning, and validation. This is a hands-on coding role
• Deploy & Integrate : Develop production-grade code and systems to deploy, serve, and monitor ML models at scale, ensuring reliability and performance. Integrate models effectively into Niche’s products and internal systems
• Measure & Iterate : Define key performance metrics, establish robust monitoring frameworks, analyze model performance in production, and drive continuous improvement through iteration and experimentation
• Champion & Evangelize : Clearly communicate complex ML concepts, model behaviors, and results to both technical and non-technical audiences. Champion the use of machine learning & data science across the organization
• Lead & Mentor : Establish ML development best practices, coding standards, and documentation. As the function grows you will guide and mentor other ML engineers
• Innovate : Stay abreast of the latest advancements in machine learning, data science, and MLOps, evaluating and potentially adopting new technologies and techniques relevant to Niche

First Year Plan

During the 1st Month :

Within 3 Months :

Within 6 Months :

Within 12 Months :

What We Are Looking For

Bonus Points

We offer