AI/ML Engineer (San Francisco)

About Gem

Gem is the only AI-first all-in-one recruiting platform. It brings together your ATS, CRM, sourcing, scheduling, and analytics — plus 650 million profiles to source from — with AI built into every workflow. By eliminating the headaches of juggling multiple tools, Gem helps customers boost recruiter productivity by up to 5x while saving 30-50% on technology costs. Over 1,000 organizations — from startups to industry leaders like Zillow, DoorDash, and Asana — trust Gem to fuel their growth. With an industry-leading 4.8/5 rating on G2, Gem is the platform recruiters actually love to use. Gem has raised $148M from renown investors including Accel, Greylock, ICONIQ, Sapphire, and Meritech.

With Gem, You Can Experience The Power Of a Truly Connected Recruiting Platform — One Consistent Interface, Unified Data, Smarter AI Recommendations, And Simplified Permissions. Our Customers Achieve Remarkable Results

Just as we strive to help our customers find great talent, we also invest in our own people and culture. We are proud of the culture we’ve built and have recently been recognized as:

• Forbes America's Best Startup Employers 2025
• Great Place to Work Certified, 2024
• Fortune Best Workplaces for Millennials, 2023
  
  

We work in our San Francisco office three days per week. In-person collaboration is core to how we ship quickly and build great products together.

About The Role

We're looking for a founding AI/ML Engineer to design and ship production-grade AI features that transform how companies hire. You'll be one of the first AI/ML engineers at Gem, shaping both the technology and how we build. You'll work on challenges like building intelligent search systems that surface perfect candidates from massive talent pools, creating AI tools that help recruiters craft personalized outreach, and extracting insights from candidate profiles and recruiting activity. You'll own your work end-to-end, from prototype to production, and iterate quickly based on real recruiter feedback.

Recruiting is an industry ripe for AI transformation. Unlike chatbots or summarization tools, our AI directly impacts whether companies succeed or fail by finding them exceptional talent.

What You'll Do

• Build multi-step reasoning systems that understand nuanced recruiter queries like 'senior ML engineers who've worked at YC companies and know PyTorch' – currently processing 800M profiles
• Develop intelligent search that understands recruiter intent and surfaces the right candidates instantly
• Ship rapidly and iterate by moving from prototype to production, measuring performance, and refining based on live product data and user feedback
• Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and engineers in our SF office to create cohesive AI-driven experiences
• Share ML expertise with teammates and help establish best practices for model development and evaluation
  
  

What You'll Need

Core technical skills:

• Experience applying AI/ML in production environments, especially with LLMs
• Hands-on knowledge of retrieval and search systems, including query understanding, ranking, and relevance optimization
• Familiarity with vector databases and embedding models for AI applications
• Understanding of retrieval architectures and their implementation
• Pragmatic approach to AI. You find the right balance between cutting-edge techniques and scalable, maintainable solutions
  
  

How You Work

• Problem-solving: You approach problems holistically, starting with clear understanding of context. You navigate ambiguity well, decompose complex problems into clean solutions, and think critically about real-world impact
• Shipping quality products: You partner closely with product and design to craft experiences that feel effortless. You understand the balance between craft, speed, and business impact
• Communication and collaboration: You explain technical concepts clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders. You engage thoughtfully in disagreements and compromise when needed
• Velocity and ownership: You're excited by quick experimentation and continuous improvement. You take pride in shipping features from start to finish
• User focus: You care about business impact and prioritize accordingly. You think critically about how your work shapes real people's daily workflows
  
  

Nice to Haves

• Prior startup experience (especially 0→1 product)
• Prompt and context engineering skills or experience with LLM fine-tuning
• Background in information retrieval, NLP, or recommendation systems
• Experience implementing feedback loops to improve search quality over time
• Track record of shipping AI features that balance product craftsmanship with technical rigor
  
  

How We Work

We've intentionally invested in removing development friction:

• Local development with Vite boots instantly with hot-reload
• CI finishes in about 10 minutes, and commits deploy to production immediately
• We ship quickly and iterate based on customer feedback
  
  

We take pride in having an unusually good engineering culture:

• Reasonable working hours
• Weekly team activities and happy hours
• Regular hackathons where we build experimental features
• Work with a world class team from Meta, Uber, and Dropbox
  
  

Benefits

• 10-year stock option exercise window
• Flexible Time Off and 16 paid holidays (including company wellness days)
• Best-in-class medical, dental, and vision coverage
• $1,200 annual learning and development stipend
• 16 weeks paid parental leave for all parents, plus $1,500 new-parent perk and flexible return-to-work options
  
  

Role Details

• Location: This role is based 3 days per week out of our San Francisco HQ and is not eligible for full-time remote work.
• Compensation: The annual cash compensation range for this position is $190,000–$260,000 based on level in addition to equity & benefits.
  
  

The range displayed on this job posting reflects the minimum and maximum compensation. Factors including location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience will determine compensation.

Gem is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate our inclusive work environment and encourage folks of all backgrounds and perspectives to apply. At Gem, we’re committed to having an inclusive and transparent environment where every voice is heard and acknowledged. We embrace our differences, and know that our diverse team is a strength that drives our success. Gem is committed to developing a barrier-free recruitment process and work environment. If you require any accommodation, please email us at accommodations@gem.com and we’ll work with you to meet your accessibility needs.

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