Machine Learning Engineer, Applied

Trace
New York, NY
Remote

Who this role is best for

A natural match if you have experience building and deploying ML models across diverse data types.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with experience in deploying models into production across multiple data domains
    — “ship the answers into production”
  • Individuals who have worked with real-world, unstructured data like video or sensor streams
    — “Comfort with messy, real-world data such as video, time series, or sensor streams”
  • Candidates who can transition between different technical areas and build necessary tooling independently
    — “Move quickly between very different problems, and build the tooling you need along the way”
  • Candidates with a clear track record of owning and solving complex problems without waiting for direction
    — “High agency. You find the problem, own it, and get it done without waiting to be told.”

Things to consider

  • This role requires a balance between research and engineering, with a focus on shipping over publishing
    — “We care much more about what you’ve built and shipped than where you’ve published”
  • The role is product-focused and may require working across multiple teams and data types
    — “You’ll work closely with our computer vision team, but this role is broader and more product-focused”

How to stand out

  • Highlight end-to-end model ownership and deployment experience in your resume and interviews
    — “Own models end to end: data, training, evaluation, and deployment into our annotation pipeline”
  • Demonstrate your ability to work with multimodal data in your projects or past roles
    — “Build training pipelines for large, multimodal datasets, including video, sensor streams, and language”
  • Show how you've improved models iteratively by starting with simple solutions
    — “Start with the simplest approach that works, then make it better”
  • Emphasize your cross-functional collaboration and ability to ship models in production
    — “Partner with our Head of Engineering and the CV team to get models into production and keep them improving”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • owned models end to end
  • built training pipelines for large datasets
Typical background
2+ years of hands-on experience in ML engineering

Skills & requirements

Required

Deep LearningTraining PipelinesMultimodal DatasetsModel DeploymentHigh Agency

Preferred

Computer VisionSensor SignalsHand Tracking VideoLanguage Data

Stack & domain

PythonPyTorchJAXBias Toward ShippingHigh AgencyRangeMachine LearningComputer VisionSensor SignalsHand Tracking VideoLanguageData InfrastructurePhysical AIEmbodied SystemsRoboticsML EngineeringResearch MindsetDeep Learning Fundamentals

About the role

Original posting from Trace via Ashby

ABOUT TRACE

Trace Labs is building the data infrastructure for physical AI.

Physical AI has the potential to transform how work gets done in the real world, from robotics to embodied systems that can see, move, and interact with their environment. But today, progress is held back by one big gap: there’s no scalable way to collect high-quality, real-world training data. Frontier robotics models are trained on far less data than language models, because there’s no “internet of robotics data.”

Trace exists to change that. We capture how humans actually interact with the physical world, at scale, and we build the ML systems that make every hour of that data more valuable.

We’re an early, deeply technical team. We move fast, we care about quality, and we believe the teams with the best data will build the best robots.

THE ROLE

This role sits between ML engineering and research. You’ll bring strong ML engineering skills, a research mindset, and deep learning fundamentals to the hardest problems we see coming at Trace, then ship the answers into production.

You’ll work closely with our computer vision team, but this role is broader and more product-focused. You won’t live on one type of data. One month you might be working with sensor signals, the next with hand tracking video, the next with language. What matters is getting a high-quality model working fast and putting it to use.

We care much more about what you’ve built and shipped than where you’ve published. If you’re earlier in your career but have a clear track record of moving fast and owning hard problems, we want to talk.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

  • Own models end to end: data, training, evaluation, and deployment into our annotation pipeline.
  • Build training pipelines for large, multimodal datasets, including video, sensor streams, and language.
  • Partner with our Head of Engineering and the CV team to get models into production and keep them improving.
  • Start with the simplest approach that works, then make it better. Pull from recent papers when they help you ship, not as the end goal.
  • Move quickly between very different problems, and build the tooling you need along the way.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

  • A BS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Aerospace, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. An MS is a plus, not a must.
  • 2+ years of industry of hands-on experience training deep learning models on real-world data, at a company, startup, or national lab. Earlier in your career is okay if your track record shows it.
  • Strong proficiency in Python and a modern deep learning framework such as PyTorch or JAX.
  • A solid grounding in ML fundamentals, including architectures, optimization, loss design, and evaluation.
  • Comfort with messy, real-world data such as video, time series, or sensor streams.
  • An extraordinary bias toward shipping. You go from idea to working model fast, and you make good calls under uncertainty.
  • High agency. You find the problem, own it, and get it done without waiting to be told.
  • Range. You’re excited to work across different kinds of data and problems, not just one narrow specialty.

WHY TRACE LABS

  • A foundational problem. The data layer for physical AI is still being defined. You’ll help define it.
  • Data at scale from day one. We have the resources to collect it. Your job is to make it count.
  • Real ownership. Your models ship into production and directly shape what our data can do.
  • Room to grow. Go deeper into ML, take on bigger systems, or both.

Source: Trace careers (Ashby)

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