Machine Learning Engineer - Recommendation Systems

TLDR

Develop scalable recommendation systems that enhance user engagement across products by leveraging machine learning and data engineering in a collaborative environment.

Job Title

Machine Learning Engineer – Recommendation Systems

Location

Bangalore

Experience

3–8 years (flexible based on depth in ML systems)

Job Description

We are looking for a Machine Learning Engineer (Recommendations) to design, build, and scale personalized recommendation systems that power discovery, ranking, and user engagement across our products. You will work at the intersection of machine learning, data engineering, and backend systems, taking models from research to production.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

Recommendation & ML

  • Design and develop recommendation systems including:
  • Collaborative Filtering (user-item, item-item)
  • Content-based and hybrid recommenders
  • Ranking and re-ranking models
  • Embedding-based retrieval (ANN, vector search)
  • Train, evaluate, and iterate on models using offline metrics (NDCG, MAP, Recall@K) and online A/B experiments
  • Build pipelines for feature engineering, model training, inference, and retraining

Production ML & Systems

  • Deploy ML models in production environments with low-latency constraints
  • Optimize inference for scale (caching, batching, approximate nearest neighbors)
  • Build real-time and batch recommendation pipelines
  • Monitor model performance, data drift, and system health

Data & Experimentation

  • Work with large-scale datasets (clicks, impressions, transactions)
  • Define success metrics for recommendations (CTR, CVR, retention)
  • Run and analyze A/B tests and iterate based on results.


Collaboration

  • Work closely with product, data, and backend teams to translate business problems into ML solutions
  • Contribute to ML best practices, documentation, and system design

Required Skills

Core ML

  • Strong understanding of:
  • Recommendation algorithms
  • Ranking and learning-to-rank
  • Embeddings and similarity search
  • Experience with Python and ML libraries (PyTorch / TensorFlow / Scikit-learn)

Data & Systems

  • Strong SQL skills; experience with large datasets
  • Experience with feature stores, data pipelines, and batch/stream processing
  • Familiarity with vector databases / ANN libraries (FAISS, ScaNN, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch KNN, Milvus)

Production & Infra

  • Experience deploying models using REST/gRPC services
  • Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, or cloud platforms (AWS / GCP / Azure)
  • Understanding of latency, throughput, and scalability trade-offs

Good to Have

  • Experience with:
  • Search or feed ranking systems
  • Hybrid retrieval (BM25 + embeddings)
  • Real-time recommendations
  • Knowledge of:
    • Kafka / streaming systems
    • MLOps tools (MLflow, Airflow)
  • Experience in e-commerce, ads, content platforms or marketplaces

What You’ll Work On

  • Personalized home feeds and search ranking
  • “People also viewed” recommendations
  • Cold-start and long-tail problems
  • Large-scale experimentation and model optimization

Nice Behavioral Traits

  • Strong problem-solving and system-thinking mindset
  • Ability to balance model quality vs production constraints
  • Comfortable owning models end-to-end

Apna builds a professional networking platform that connects blue-collar job seekers with small and medium-sized businesses across India. Focused on empowering the working class, Apna tackles the challenges of opportunity and skills access, making it a vital resource for millions of job seekers and employers. Its rapid growth and extensive user base highlight its commitment to transforming the job market landscape.

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