Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to over 30% of the Fortune 100 with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.  

Last year, more than $3.3 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers. 

We're looking for an exceptional team lead to manage the Machine Learning Discovery team which powers the core recommendation engine of our work marketplace. In this role, you will keep the Machine Learning Engineers focused on building cutting-edge machine learning models to deliver the intelligent and streamlined discovery experience. At the same time, you will work with different cross-functional teams, such as Product, Research, and Frontend Engineers etc, to create alignment and clarity.

Your Responsibilities:

• Dive deep into the data to derive and share your insights across the business

• Lead the creation of models that will become core components driving the discovery and recommendation experience

• Provide context to your team and drive alignment towards business objectives

• Influence and empower the team to ensure key projects and engineering duties are fulfilled

• Build quality relationships with cross-functional teams

• Coach and mentor machine learning engineers on the team

Requirements for the role:

• Deep knowledge of machine learning, information retrieval, recommender systems, natural language processing, and related fields.

• Solid programming skills that enable you to retrieve, analyze and process data, and build machine learning models from the ground up (e.g. SQL, Python, Scala, Java).

• Experience in any of the Technologies like Solr, Lucene, Elastic Search, AWS lambda or others.

• Superior ability to analyze and interpret the results of product experiments.

• Excellent experience working with multiple organizational stakeholders including product, analytics, engineering, and research, etc.

• Strong team management skills with the ability to manage quarterly team roadmap and competing priorities.

• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal, being able to explain complex technical information to a non-technical audience.

Come change how the world works.

Come change how the world works.

At Upwork, you’ll shape talent solutions for how the world works today. We are a remote-first organization working together to create exciting remote work opportunities for a global community of professionals.  While we have physical offices in San Francisco and Chicago, currently we also support hiring of corporate full-time employees in 19 states in the United States. Please speak with a member of our recruitment team to determine whether you are located in a state in which we are hiring corporate full-time employees. 

Our vibrant culture is built on shared values and our mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. We foster amazing teams, put our community first, and have a bias toward action. We encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work and grow together through development opportunities, mentorship, and employee resource groups. Oh yeah, we’ve also got amazing benefits.

Check out our Life at Upwork page to learn more about the employee experience.   

Upwork is proudly committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.