Senior Engineering Manager (Machine Learning)

Join Checkr, a leading background check technology company, as a Senior Engineering Manager in the Machine Learning Engineering team. In this role, you will lead a team of ML engineers, set the technical direction, and hold the team accountable for production outcomes. You will also shape Checkr's broader AI strategy and work closely with cross-functional teams. This position is based in San Francisco and offers a range of benefits, including competitive compensation, comprehensive health plans, and flexible paid time off.

Lead and grow the Machine Learning Engineering team, setting clear ownership and generating a roadmap for the team.

Built ML infrastructure or MLOps platforms used by multiple teams

About Checkr

• Launched a new AI product from early customer discovery through production scale
• Operated ML in a compliance-sensitive domain such as fintech, legal tech, HR tech, healthcare, or security

Responsibilities

• Set the strategy and roadmap for machine learning initiatives, turning ambiguous company priorities into a focused agenda.
• Raise the production engineering bar by ensuring that models and agents ship as dependable software with clear APIs, tests, and observability.
• Technical depth across the ML lifecycle: data and labeling, experimentation, model selection, deployment, APIs, CI/CD, observability, evaluation, retraining, and incident response
• Experience setting direction for NLP, classification, extraction, entity resolution, risk, fraud, recommendation, or similarly complex applied-ML domains
• A record of translating an ambiguous business problem into a sharp roadmap, measurable outcomes, and shipped systems
• Executive-level communication and cross-functional influence. You can make a hard technical trade-off legible to senior leaders and leave the room with a decision

Requirements

• Fluency with modern LLM systems, including structured outputs, tool use, agent orchestration, retrieval, evaluation, latency, quality, and cost trade-offs
• 3+ years managing ML or software engineers, including hiring and developing senior and staff-level technical leaders
• 10+ years building software and machine learning or AI systems, with a clear progression in scope and impact
• An A-player mindset with a strong bias for action: you raise the bar, move with urgency, stay resilient through ambiguity, and take ownership to deliver meaningful outcomes
• Sound judgment across classical ML, deep learning, LLMs, rules, and conventional software
• A strong software-engineering foundation and a record of shipping ML systems that run in production
• You use modern AI tools to move faster, verify their output, and can spot plausible-looking work that should not ship
• Strong people leadership. You create leverage through clear ownership, candid feedback, delegation, and coaching
• Python, AWS/SageMaker or similar cloud ML platforms, Snowflake, Spark, and modern data tooling

Preferred

• Document intelligence, OCR, graph systems, identity resolution, trust and safety, fraud, or risk

Pay

USD 268,000 - 315,000