Senior/Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Ads

Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR) is the essential neighborhood network. Neighbors, public agencies, and businesses use Nextdoor to connect around local information that matters in more than 350,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries. Nextdoor builds innovative technology to foster local community, share important news, and create neighborhood connections at scale. Download the app and join the neighborhood at nextdoor.com.

Meet Your Future Neighbors

At Nextdoor, machine learning is one of the most important teams we are growing. Machine learning is starting to transform our product through personalization, driving major impact across different parts of our platform, including newsfeed, notifications, ad relevance, connections, search, and trust. Our machine learning team is lean but hungry to drive even more impact and make Nextdoor the neighborhood hub for local exchange. We believe that ML will be integral to making Nextdoor valuable to our members. We also believe that ML should be ethical and encourage healthy habits and interaction, not addictive behavior. We are looking for great engineers who believe in the power of the local community to empower our members to make their communities great places to live. 

At Nextdoor, we operate in an AI-first environment and expect every team member to actively use AI tools as part of their workflow. We aren't looking for prompt engineers; we’re looking for people who use tools like Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Glean to challenge their own thinking and take full ownership of AI-assisted outputs.

We also offer a warm and inclusive work environment that embraces a hybrid employment model, blending an in office presence and work from home experience for our valued employees. The hiring team will go over these expectations with you if you are being considered for a role near one of our offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and London.

• You will be part of a scrappy and impactful team building data-intensive products, working with data and features, building machine learning models, and sharing insights around data and experiments. You will work closely with the Product and Data Science teams on a daily basis. Finally, you will help build the foundational patterns that ML engineers will use for years to come as we ramp up our effort to introduce machine learning into our platform
• Collect and gather datasets to build machine learning (ML) models that make real-time decisions for the Nextdoor platform
• Analyze datasets and use important features to build low-latency models for decisions that need to be made quickly
• Deploy ML models into production environments and integrate them into the product
• Run and analyze live user-facing experiments to iterate on model quality by measuring impact on business metrics
• Collaborate with other engineers and data scientists to create optimal experiences on the platform
• Participate in in-person Nextdoor events such as trainings, off-sites, volunteer days, and team building exercises
• Build in-person relationships with team members and contribute to Nextdoor’s company culture

• B.S. in Computer Science, Applied Math, Statistics, Computational Biology, or a related field
• 5+ years of industry/academic experience in applying machine learning at scale
• Experience in building ML models for advertising products
• Proven engineering skills. Experience in writing and maintaining high-quality production code
• Ability to work with and analyze large amounts of data
• Ability to succeed in a dynamic startup environment

Compensation, benefits, perks, and recognition programs at Nextdoor come together to create our total rewards package. Compensation will vary depending on your relevant skills, experience, and qualifications.

The starting salary for this role is expected to range from $205,000 to $355,000 on an annualized basis, or potentially greater in the event that your 'level' of proficiency exceeds the level expected for the role. The salary range will be determined by the candidate’s geographic location.

We expect to award a meaningful equity grant for this role. With quarterly vesting, your first vest date will take place within 3 months of your start date.

When it comes to benefits, we have you covered! Nextdoor employees can choose between a variety of health plans, including a 100% covered employee only plan option, and we also provide a OneMedical membership for concierge care.

At Nextdoor, we empower our employees to build stronger local communities. To create a platform where all feel welcome, we want our workforce to reflect the diversity of the neighbors we serve. We encourage everyone interested in our mission to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or any other trait that unfairly targets a group of people. In accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we always consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

For information about our collection and use of applicants’ personal information, please see Nextdoor's Personnel Privacy Notice, found here.