Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Patreon is a media and community platform where over 300,000 creators give their biggest fans access to exclusive work and experiences. We offer creators a variety of ways to engage with their communities and build a lasting business including: paid memberships, free memberships, community chats, live experiences, and selling to fans directly with one-time purchases.

Ultimately our goal is simple: fund the creative class. And we're leaders in that space, with:

• $8 billion+ in revenue generated since Patreon's inception

• 60 million+ free new memberships for fans who may not be ready to pay just yet, and

• 10 million+ fans paying each month for exclusive access to creators' work and community.

As we scale the platform, understanding what our creators are making and what fans are consuming becomes increasingly important. We’re looking for a Taxonomy Machine Learning Engineer to develop the content and creator classification systems that power discovery, recommendations, and platform insights.

This role is based in San Francisco or in New York and open to those who are able to be in-office 2 days per week on a hybrid work model.

About the Role

• You’ll be responsible for building and deploying machine learning pipelines that generate taxonomies of creators, content, and risk profiles across the platform. These systems enable everything from improved recommendations to content quality signals and search relevance.

• You’ll collaborate closely with the data science and machine learning teams to design robust models, integrate your work into production systems, and help the broader company understand the trends emerging from creator and fan behavior.

• You'll translate data into actionable insights and communicate your technical work to the data team, your cross-functional partners, executive leadership, and the rest of the company.

• You’ll be a cultural and technical leader on the data science team.

About You

• 5+ years of experience in ML engineering or applied ML roles

• You have expertise in natural language processing, topic modeling, and clustering techniques

• You believe great systems are not just technically sound, but also thoughtfully applied to solve real-world user needs

• You have experience working with unstructured content (e.g. audio, video, text, images) and understand how to extract meaning from complex media

• You collaborate effectively across engineering, data science, and product teams

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field

• Strong Python skills and fluency in common ML/NLP libraries

• Experience with distributed systems, production pipelines, and model deployment frameworks

About Patreon

Patreon powers creators to do what they love and get paid by the people who love what they do. Our team is passionate about making this mission and our core values come to life every day in our work. Through this work, our Patronauts:

• Put Creators First | They’re the reason we’re here. When creators win, we win.

• Build with Craft | We sign our name to every deliverable, just like the creators we serve.

• Make it Happen | We don’t quit. We learn and deliver.

• Win Together | We grow as individuals. We win as a team.

We hire talented and passionate people from different backgrounds because workplace diversity and inclusion is critical to our ability to serve creators worldwide. If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t match with every bullet point outlined above, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re a creator at heart, are energized by our mission, and share our company values, we’d love to hear from you.

Patreon is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the interview process, please let us know via email at accomodations@patreon.

Patreon offers a competitive benefits package including and not limited to salary, equity plans, healthcare, flexible time off, company holidays and recharge days, commuter benefits, lifestyle stipends, learning and development stipends, patronage, parental leave, and 401k plan with matching.

Patreon operates under a hybrid work model, where employees based in office locations are expected to come into the office two days per week, excluding sick time and paid leave. The goal of this policy is to be intentional about the in-person time we spend together to strengthen the feeling of community at Patreon. Candidates outside of our office hubs are not expected to meet the same requirements.

At Patreon, we believe in fair and transparent pay. In compliance with New York and California pay transparency laws, we are sharing the expected salary range for this role.

The posted salary range is dependent on the location and the level. This range may encompass multiple levels within the role’s job family. The final offer will be based on candidate’s experience, skills, competencies, and geographic location, aligning with the appropriate job level within Patreon’s leveling framework. For remote employees located outside CA and NY, salary may vary based on location and local market conditions.

Patreon reserves the right to modify or update compensation and benefits at any time.