Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer

We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.

We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurial surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.

Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.

Role Overview 

The SDPE (Search and Discovery Product Engineering) ML group is Coupang’s advanced machine learning team. It keeps Coupang at the forefront of machine learning technology across multiple application areas including content understanding, recommendation, ranking and more. It is a high impact applied team that works on directly bringing that technology to the product in collaboration with product engineering teams. The main contribution of the team’s work is to drive top line metrics for wowing our customers and thriving Coupang business. 

As a Senior Staff ML engineer in SDPE ML Group, you will leverage the most advanced algorithms to improve and innovate Coupang’s product search and discovery experience, including query/intent understanding, query recommendation and search widgets quality, and everything that customers see on search page. You are expected to be a leading expert in one or multiple areas including recommendation platform, machine learning, deep learning or natural language processing. The ideal candidates are pragmatic, resourceful, and embrace challenges that are seemingly impossible. The ideal candidates also have rich industry experience and a track record of delivering highly impactful projects. 

What You Will Do 

• Root causes the major defects that are present in Coupang searchers’ experience.   
• Propose solutions which address these defects and leverage the state-of-the-art technologies, including ML, DL and LLM.  
• Drive end-to-end ML methods that have a high degree of ambiguity, scale and complexity 
• Build machine learning models, perform proof-of-concept, experiment, optimize and deploy your models into production. 
• Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for data analysis, machine-learning model development, model validation and serving. 
• Run A/B experiments, gather data, and perform statistical analysis to develop insights that drive product requirements. 
• Present results and explain methods to the leadership. 
• Mentor junior engineers on the team and partner teams and help to uplevel ML talent across the company. 
• Be a thought leader and able to gain consensus in the organization when needed.  

 Basic Qualifications 

• 8+ years working experience in the engineering teams that build large-scale ML-driven user-facing products  
• Experience with state of the art ML modeling techniques and approaches like transformers, self supervised pre-training, generative modeling, LLMs, etc. 
• Hands-on experience training and applying models at scale using deep learning frameworks like PyTorch or Tensorflow. Successful candidates in this role need to be able to build bridge state of the art approaches to real world impact. 
• Proficient coding skills in Java, C++ or Python  
• Masters or PhD in Comp Sci or related fields 

 Preferred Qualifications 

• Love to explore new territory of technology and go deep on domain knowledge.   
• Ability to think outside-the-box and challenge conventional wisdoms.   
• Extensive knowledge in deep learning and computer vision techniques. 
• A passion to explore, improve, automate and optimize distributed systems and tools.   
• PhD in Computer Science or related Engineering majors   
• Bonus points for experience at ecommerce or social network or search companies  
• Bonus points for large language models, generative AI experience. 

Pay & Benefits   

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. At Coupang, your base pay is one part of your total compensation.  

The base pay for this position ranges from $159,000 / year in our lowest geographic market to $324,000 / year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on several factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.  

 General Description of All Benefits   

• Medical/Dental/Vision/Life, AD&D insurance   
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) & Health Savings Account (HSA)  
• Long-term/Short-term Disability  
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) program  
• 401K Plan with Company Match  
• 18-21 days of the Paid Time Off (PTO) a year based on the tenure  
• 12 Public Holidays  
• Paid Parental leave  
• Pre-tax commuter benefits  
• MTV - [Free] Electric Car Charging Station   

General Description of Other Compensation  

 “Other Compensation” includes, but is not limited to, bonuses, equity, or other forms of compensation that would be offered to the hired applicant in addition to their established salary range or wage scale.  

Coupang is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to actual or perceived race (including traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and protective hair styles), color, religion, religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices), sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding), gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ,ancestry, national origin (including language use restrictions), age (40 and over), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C status, family status (including but not limited to marital or domestic partnership status), military or veteran status, use of a trained dog guide or service animal, political activities or affiliations, ancestry, citizenship, family and medical leave status, status as a victim of any violent crime, or any other characteristic or class protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Coupang is also committed to providing a safe work environment for its employees and its consumers.   

If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application of recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at [email protected].  

Job Requisition ID: R0043745