Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Job Title: Principal Machine Learning Engineer Department: Product & Technology Classification: Exempt Duration: Direct Hire Location: BILT - Global Brand Support Center, Grapevine, Texas 76051 Overview BILT Incorporated is a fast-growing software-as-a-service company revolutionizing instructions and training for consumers and professional technicians alike. BILT creates official 3D Intelligent Instructions® for thousands of products from hundreds of innovative brands and hosts them on a free mobile app. Users can manipulate interactive animations on a touchscreen, providing a superior training differentiator for products that require assembly, installation, maintenance, programming, or repair. BILT's mission is to create an experience so enabling and empowering that it turns users into promoters of the brands we serve. Our Global Brand Support Center is located in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex between DFW airport and the Southlake Town Square. About the Job BILT is building the future of spatial instruction—transforming how people learn to assemble, install, and repair the physical world. We sit at the intersection of AI and spatial computing, with a unique dataset of rich 3D instructional content that positions us to lead in multimodal understanding and generation. We're looking for a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to be a foundational technical leader on our AI team. This is not a role where you'll fine-tune some models and call it a day. You'll be tackling open research questions, exploring novel architectures, and building systems that don't have established playbooks. You'll work at the frontier of multimodal AI—bridging language, vision, and spatial understanding in ways that haven't been done before. If you thrive in ambiguity and want to shape the technical direction of an AI team from the ground up, this is your role. What You'll Do Serve as the technical anchor for the AI team, driving architectural decisions and setting the standard for engineering excellence. Tackle ambiguous, research-oriented problems—from initial exploration through production deployment. Design and build novel ML systems spanning multimodal understanding, generation, and spatial reasoning Fine-tune, adapt, and extend foundation models to our unique domain, developing robust evaluation frameworks and training pipelines. Own critical infrastructure including training pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and model serving. Mentor and elevate other engineers through technical guidance, code review, and knowledge sharing. Partner closely with the Director of AI and CTO to shape technical strategy and roadmap. Stay current with the rapidly evolving AI landscape and identify opportunities to apply emerging techniques. What We’re Looking For Required 8+ years of experience in machine learning, with a track record of shipping complex systems to production Deep expertise in modern deep learning frameworks (PyTorch strongly preferred) Experience with LLMs, multimodal models, or related areas—not just fine-tuning, but understanding architectures deeply enough to extend and adapt them Comfort with research-oriented work: reading papers, prototyping novel approaches, and navigating problems without clear solutions Strong software engineering foundations—you write clean, maintainable, production-quality code Ability to work autonomously and drive projects from ambiguous problem statements to working systems Preferred Experience with Vision-Language Models, VLA architectures, or embodied AI Background in 3D understanding, CAD, spatial reasoning, computer graphics, or geometric deep learning Expertise in model optimization, efficient inference, and deployment at scale Publications, open-source contributions, or demonstrated research impact Experience as a technical lead or foundational engineer at a high-growth startup This role is based at BILT's Global Brand Support Center in Grapevine, Texas, near DFW Airport and Southlake Town Square. Routine use of standard office equipment (computers, tablets, phones, email, and Microsoft Teams). Physical demands include prolonged computer use and occasional lifting of up to 25 pounds. Office hours: 8:30 AM-5:30 PM, Monday through Friday, with convenient parking and nearby amenities. Other Duties Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice. About BILT BILT provides 3D Intelligent Instructions, creating and delivering interactive content for iOS, Android, and now turnkey guided work instructions for visionOS. The award-winning platform revolutionizes the DIY experience as well as professional training and operational enablement. BILT is accessible, sustainable, and efficient. This position is located in the Grapevine Brand Support Center in Texas. BILT is a veteran-friendly company and an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law, and will not be discriminated against based on disability. We do not accept unsolicited agency resumes. We will not pay fees to any third-party agency, outside recruiter, or firm without a mutually agreed-upon contract and will not be responsible for any agency fees associated with unsolicited resumes. Unsolicited resumes will be considered our property and will be processed accordingly. #J-18808-Ljbffr