Research Engineer - AI for Member Systems

About Netflix: At Netflix, our central mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next digital episode — pushing the boundaries of global storytelling, building fandoms, and turning the unimaginable into an everyday reality. We operate as a high-performance dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge human creativity and intuition with cutting-edge, automated technology frameworks. Trusted by hundreds of millions of members across the globe, Netflix fosters a unique culture of freedom, high responsibility, and radical inclusion to build the future of global entertainment.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly analytical, systems-minded Research Engineer (Level 5/6 track) to join our elite AI for Member Systems (AIMS) Engineering group. In this high-impact research and software engineering seat, you will hold direct technical accountability for enhancing the machine learning algorithms, personalization architectures, and search systems that power the global Netflix experience. Moving far beyond theoretical modeling, you will take scalable ML solutions all the way from abstract concept to production deployment within our massive, real-time distributed ecosystems. This position demands an expert in statistical computing who can navigate multi-language codebases, optimize deep neural networks, and execute rigorous A/B validation tests to track member engagement metrics.

Key Responsibilities

• Personalization Algorithm Engineering: Design, train, tune, and deploy next-generation machine learning models focused on hyper-personalized user recommendations and long-term reward modeling.
• Scale Production Deployments: Build and optimize production-ready ML infrastructure capable of serving diverse content tastes and real-time behavioral streams across our global member base.
• Advanced Experimentation & Validation: Conceptualize and run comprehensive offline data experiments and large-scale live A/B tests to systematically measure algorithmic performance against business KPIs.
• State-of-the-Art Model Training: Evaluate and implement advanced applied models including Transformers, Large Language Models (LLMs), multi-armed Bandits, and RLHF reward alignment systems .
• Infrastructure & Tooling Evolution: Contribute natively to our internal ML tooling pipelines, integrating automated tracking frameworks to keep platform development at the cutting edge of industry best practices.
• Cross-Functional Innovation Syncs: Collaborate closely within matrixed divisions containing researchers, backend engineers, data scientists, and product managers to translate clinical insights into software features.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 5+ years of verified professional history applying complex machine learning algorithms within an industrial, high-scale enterprise setting.
• A **PhD or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Statistics**, Mathematics, or an equivalent highly quantitative engineering field.
• Expertise across core machine learning frameworks, with a track record of deploying, optimizing, and monitoring models in real-time production environments.
• Advanced, clean software design and code compilation capabilities authored natively in Python , accompanied by professional fluency in Scala, Java, C++, or C# .
• Hands-on technical background in fields such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), deep neural networks, LLM evaluation, or causal inference logic.
• Outstanding interpersonal, written, and verbal communication mechanics, optimized to drive clarity across distributed engineering divisions.
• Location Context: 100% remote-first full-time operational flexibility open exclusively to qualified research professionals permanently located within the United States .

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior experience building, optimizing, or expanding massive-scale recommendation engines, algorithmic search platforms, or similar high-volume consumer systems.
• Sustained technical contributions to open-source software libraries in machine learning, data engineering, or adjacent fields.

What We Offer

• Top of Market Compensation Structure: An elite all-salary base configuration ranging from **$600,000 – $1,066,000 USD** annualized, completely free of traditional bonus gatekeepers. Employees choose each year how to split their pay between cash salary and corporate stock options.
• The ultimate professional canvas to independently engineer, pilot, and deploy the AI recommendation architectures driving global streaming entertainment.
• Comprehensive health plans, dedicated mental health coaching infrastructures, and family-forming support benefits.
• 401(k) retirement plan featuring competitive employer matching contributions alongside robust long-term disability plans.
• Immediate entitlement to **Flexible Time Off** parameters for full-time salaried staff, ensuring excellent personal balance within a high-trust workplace.