Staff ML Engineer

About

MasterClass is the streaming platform where the world’s best come together so anyone, anywhere can access and be inspired by their knowledge and stories. We put you in the room with the creators, thinkers, makers and leaders who have changed the world, so that you can change yours.

Members get unprecedented access to 200+ instructors and classes across a wide variety of fields, including Arts & Entertainment, Business, Design & Style, Sports & Gaming, Writing and more.

We’re a remote‑first workforce with collaborative work spaces in San Francisco and Kitchener, Ontario, and employees in several U.S. states.

Role Overview

MasterClass is building the next generation of learning products with AI at the core. Foundation models and agentic systems are central to how we design and deliver every new product, powering intelligent, adaptive experiences that help millions of people learn from the world's best.

We are looking for a Staff ML Engineer to join our AI engineering team and help define and deliver these products. The role is focused on delivery: staying deeply connected to the latest research, models, and techniques while shipping products that people use. You will work alongside a small, talented group of ML engineers and partner closely with product, design, and engineering leadership.

What You Will Do

• Design and build agentic AI systems that power consumer learning products, including multi‑step reasoning, tool use, and orchestration architectures.
• Select and integrate foundation models (LLMs, multimodal) based on product requirements, making pragmatic trade‑offs between quality, latency, cost, and safety.
• Build evaluation and observability frameworks that ensure AI product quality at scale, including automated testing, human‑in‑the‑loop review, and production monitoring.
• Architect reliable, production‑grade AI pipelines, including prompt management, context retrieval (RAG), caching, and fallback strategies.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, and Engineering to translate ambiguous product goals into well‑defined technical approaches and ship features end‑to‑end.
• Stay deeply current with the foundation model landscape—new models, techniques, agentic frameworks, and research—and bring that knowledge to bear on product decisions.
• Mentor and elevate the AI engineering team by sharing best practices, leading design reviews, and establishing reusable patterns for agentic product development.

Requirements

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years focused on building products with large language models or foundation models.
• Demonstrated experience shipping consumer‑facing AI products that use agentic patterns (tool use, multi‑step reasoning, orchestration, planning).
• Deep working knowledge of the current foundation model ecosystem: model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, open‑source), prompt engineering, RAG architectures, evaluation frameworks, and orchestration tooling.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: system design, API design, production observability, and the ability to write clean, maintainable code in Python.
• Track record of staying on the cutting edge—you can point to specific ways you’ve incorporated new research, models, or techniques into shipped products.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills; experience working cross‑functionally with product, design, and engineering teams.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with model fine‑tuning or distillation (SFT, DPO, RLHF).
• Background in edtech, consumer media, or content platforms.
• Published research or open‑source contributions in AI/ML.
• Experience with multi‑agent system design or advanced orchestration frameworks.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary range (Ontario, Canada): $171,000 CAD – $225,000 CAD (adjusted for geographic differential).
• Equity participation.
• Comprehensive benefits: medical, dental, vision, flexible PTO, and more.

Equal Opportunity

We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. MasterClass will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you have a disability or special need, let us know how we can better accommodate you.