Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Foundation Modeling

Job description

**San Francisco, CA, USA**
**Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Foundation Modeling**
Location
San Francisco, CA, USA
Department
Engineering
Requisition ID
JOBREQ-2514984
**Role description**

**The opportunity**
At Unity, we’re committed to building a culture that fosters collaboration and innovation.

Within our fast-paced environment, we’re tackling complex challenges that drive meaningful impact for creators and users across our ecosystem.

Our Foundation Modeling team plays a central role in this effort by developing state-of-the-art conversion rate (CVR) prediction and market price models that power our ad ranking and recommendation systems.

These models help advertisers reach the right users at the right time by accurately estimating engagement and conversion likelihood.

By leveraging large-scale behavioral data, creative features, and contextual signals, we continuously improve the relevance and accuracy of our predictions.

This drives key outcomes such as higher user engagement, stronger conversion performance, and better return on ad spend — enabling advertisers to achieve their goals while delivering a better experience for users.

We are seeking a highly skilled Staff ML Engineer to drive state-of-the-art bidding optimization systems that enable efficient budget pacing, goal-aligned automated strategies, continual improvement through experimentation, and sustainable growth for Unity Ads.

**What you'll be doing**

+ Design, implement, and maintain high-performance CTR and CVR prediction models that power ad ranking and recommendation systems.
+ Build and refine systems for creative understanding and user behavior modeling, enabling more accurate and context-aware engagement predictions.
+ Ensure model quality and reliability by continuously monitoring performance, calibrating predictions, and addressing data drift or delayed feedback.
+ Actively participate and work with other leads to set the long term direction for the team, plan and oversee engineering designs and project execution.
+ Effectively communicate complex technical concepts to non-engineering stakeholders.

**What we're looking for**

+ Advanced degree (MS or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, related field, or equivalent practical experience.
+ 7+ years of hands-on experience building and operating large-scale Ads delivery and optimization systems.
+ 3+ years of experience building CTR/CVR systems, content understanding, or behavior modeling systems.
+ Significant experience in one or more general-purpose programming languages like Python, Go, Scala, C++ or similar.
+ Knowledge of metric design, experimentation methodologies, and large-scale data analysis.

**You might also have**

+ Experience designing and productionizing optimization algorithms in an ad serving platform and/or other marketplaces.
+ Experience with state-of-the-art control systems, reinforcement learning algorithms.

**Additional information**

+ International relocation support is not available for this position.
+ Work visa/immigration sponsorship is not available for this position

**Life at Unity**
We offer a wide range of benefits designed to support employees' well-being and work-life balance.

You can read more about them on our career page (https://unity.com/careers) .

Unity [NYSE: U] is the leading platform to create and grow games and interactive experiences.

Creators, ranging from game developers to artists, architects, automotive designers, infrastructure experts, filmmakers, and more, use Unity to bring their imaginations to life across multiple platforms, from mobile, PC, and console, to spatial computing.

As of the third quarter of 2024, more than 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games were made with Unity, and in 2024, Made with Unity applications had an average of 3.7 billion downloads per month.

For more information, please visit Unity (https://www.unity.com) .

_Unity is a proud equal opportunity employer.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment and celebrate our employees across age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

Our differences are strengths that enable us to support the growing and evolving needs of our customers, partners, and collaborators.

If you have a disability that means there are preparations or accommodations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please fill out this form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdrbRLG1N-apH1eahQ622Gypo-rmiAB6LLTP1UsSWQNu7omxQ/viewform) to let us know._

_Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records._

_This position requires the incumbent to have a sufficient knowledge of English to have professional verbal and written exchanges in this language since the performance of the duties related to this position requires frequent and regular communication with colleagues and partners located worldwide and whose common language is English._

_Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this Web site or directly to managers.

Unity does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes.

Unity will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Unity._

_Your privacy is important to us.

Please take a moment to review our Prospect Privacy Policy (https://unity.com/legal/global-data-privacy-notice-to-prospects) and Applicant Privacy Policy (https://unity.com/de/legal/global-data-privacy-notice-to-applicants) .

Should you have any concerns about your privacy, please contact us at DPO@unity.com._

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_*Note: Certain locations require a good faith disclosure of the base salary range for the role.

The actual salary for the successful candidate may differ based on location, experience, and other job-related factors._

Gross pay salary

$192,600—$288,800 USD

Required Skill Profession

Other General