Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Patreon
Safety
$200-300k
+ Equity
Funding platform for creatives
Open for applications
Funding platform for creatives
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$200-300k
+ Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To put creators in control of their work and their futures by strengthening the bond between them and their communities.
Role
Who you are
- You’ve worked on end-to-end machine learning systems, from data exploration and signal development through model deployment, monitoring, and experimentation
- You write clean, reliable production code (Python or similar) and bring a thoughtful, detail-oriented approach to code reviews
- You’re comfortable debugging complex systems and use a systematic approach to understand what’s going wrong
- You’re naturally curious and enjoy digging into messy datasets to understand products, users, and edge cases
- You’re motivated by working on high-stakes, real-world problems where ML systems operate at scale and outcomes matter
- You communicate clearly, whether that’s writing design docs, explaining tradeoffs, or sharing results with partners
- You’re excited about building early versions of systems and seeing them grow into high-impact, widely used solutions
- You care deeply about using machine learning responsibly to support and protect creators, and you’re excited to grow your expertise in Trust & Safety over time
- Masters in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, a related field, or the equivalent OR a minimum of 5 years of Machine Learning experience
- 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
What the job involves
- This role is part of the Safety Engineering team at Patreon
- Safety Engineering is responsible for using engineering techniques to reduce risks to creators, fans, and Patreon
- This includes content moderation, fraud detection, and account integrity
- You’ll be joining a team with established machine learning engineers, with experience putting ML models into production to drive real impact
- We partner closely with policy and Trust & Safety Operations to accomplish our mission
- This team is part of Patreon’s risk org which includes Safety Engineering, Identity Engineering, and Information Security teams
- Explore data and real-world cases to develop signals and machine learning models that identify and reduce platform risk
- Partner with cross-functional teams (product, engineering, design, legal, Trust & Safety) to design practical ML solutions that fit real workflows
- Analyze and prepare training data, including working with crowdsourced labeling and human-in-the-loop processes
- Prototype, train, and iterate on machine learning models, using a mix of established and novel techniques
- Own the path from idea to production: deploy ML and signal-based models, and write backend code when needed to support them
- Build observability into models, debug performance gaps, and continuously improve based on real-world results
- Measure impact using offline evaluation and experiments such as A/B tests
Our take
Creatives face two major struggles in the online space: getting eyes (or ears) on their work, and getting paid for it. Patreon was founded to solve both problems with a platform that would provide a space for creators to host and promote their work, and offer supporters a way to show their support through a regular paid subscription.
Patreon has been a leader in the content subscription space since its founding, but recently has come under pressure from newer rivals such as Substack and Ko-fi. It has maintained its position by shifting its focus from being primarily a marketplace for supporters to find creatives that interest them to being a toolbox for content creators to promote their work. While the site's creatives value this approach it remains to be seen whether Patreon will be able to return to the growth it was enjoying in previous years.
Despite the inroads made by competitors and a troubling global economic outlook making finances tougher for content creators and their supporters, Patreon is still a leader in its space, with over 250,000 active creators having made $3.5B through the platform.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Apr 2021
$155m
SERIES F
Sep 2020
$90m
SERIES E
Total funding: $352.1m
Company benefits
- Health Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision plans are available to our US employees and their dependents. Our plans have a nationwide network and we also cover a primary care concierge membership.
- Balance & Wellness: We offer a generous Flexible Time Off policy, in addition to days throughout the year where everyone takes the same day off to recharge our batteries. Employees and their dependents also have access to therapy, coaching, and Employee Assistance Programs services.
- Family Planning: We provide 20 weeks of paid parental leave, fertility, adoption, and surrogacy benefits, as well as an annual stipend for new additions to your families (including pets!).
- Lifestyle & Learning: You’ll have stipends to fund your personal lifestyle and to support your favorite creators on Patreon, as well as an annual stipend for learning and development.
- Hybrid Work: Our offices are in San Francisco, New York, and Porto. Plus, we have more teammates working remotely around the world.
- Financial Support: We offer employer matching for our retirement plans and Health Savings Account (HSA), as well as access to 1:1 financial guidance with a Certified Financial Planner.
Company HQ
SoMa, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Jack Conte
(Co-Founder & CEO)Graduated from Stanford with a degree in Music. Created musical content on Youtube as Pomplamoose before founding Patreon.
Sam Yam
(Co-Founder, CTO & President)Worked in Analytics and Engineering roles at Yahoo, Ning and Loopt. Previously founded mobile advertising company AdWhirl, which was acquired by Google.
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