Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Conversational AI

Overview Machine Learning Engineers at Dropbox develop high-impact products that advance Dropbox’s mission of designing a more enlightened way of working. Dropbox MLEs deliver products using a full range of ML techniques—including computer vision, natural language processing, recommendation systems, large language models (LLMs), and LLM-driven agents—and modern practices such as LLM fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Some algorithms run on mobile devices, while others require large clusters on our infrastructure. We apply techniques like model compression, distillation, on-device optimization, and scalable training/serving with robust evaluation and monitoring. Dropbox is looking for Machine Learning Engineers with an academic or practical background in ML, ideally with experience in natural language understanding, information retrieval, knowledge extraction, or deep learning, as well as hands-on work with LLMs (pre-training and fine-tuning, including instruction tuning and LoRA/adapters), prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, safety/guardrails and evaluation, and productionizing generative and predictive systems.

Our Engineering Career Framework describes what’s expected for our engineers at each of our career levels. Check out our blog post on this topic and more.

Responsibilities Design, code, train, test, deploy, and iterate on large-scale ML and LLM systems across cloud and mobile/edge environments

Build delightful, privacy-first product experiences (e.g., intelligent search, document understanding, recommendations, and AI assistants) in partnership with Engineering, Product, and Design

Lead end-to-end LLM workflows: data curation, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, tool use/agents, and fine-tuning (e.g., instruction tuning, LoRA/adapters) with rigorous evaluation

Develop and maintain production-quality services for training and serving, including scalable APIs, vector/feature stores, and streaming/ETL data pipelines

Optimize for latency, cost, and quality using techniques like quantization, distillation, caching, batching, and autoscaling; tailor models for on-device vs. cluster execution

Establish robust offline/online evaluation: experiment design, A/B testing, guardrails and safety checks, hallucination mitigation, and automated monitoring/observability with clear SLOs

Communicate technical trade-offs, risks, and impact to cross-functional stakeholders; write clear design docs, roadmaps, and decision records

Partner with Security, Legal, and Privacy to ensure responsible AI, data governance, and compliance in training and inference

Proactively explore and integrate advances in ML/AI (CV, NLP, recsys, LLMs) and rapidly prototype and transfer promising research into production

Mentor teammates, contribute to code reviews and best practices, and help shape the technical direction of ML and AI at Dropbox

Requirements BS or MS in Computer Science or related technical field involving Machine Learning or equivalent technical experience

8+ years of experience in engineering with 5+ years of experience building Machine Learning or AI systems

Strong industry experience working with large scale data

Strong analytical and problem-solving skills

Familiarity with search-related applications of Large Language Models

Proven software engineering skills across multiple languages including but not limited to Python, Go, C/C++

Experience with Machine Learning software tools and libraries (e.g., PyTorch, HuggingFace, TensorFlow, Keras, Scikit-learn, etc.)

Preferred Qualifications PhD in Computer Science or related field with research in machine learning

Experience with one or more of the following: natural language processing, deep learning, bayesian reasoning, recommender systems, learning to rank, speech processing, learning from semistructured data, graph learning, reinforcement or active learning, large language models, ML software systems, retrieval-augmented generation, machine learning on edge devices

Experience building 0→1 ML products at large (Dropbox-level) scale or multiple 0→1 products at smaller scale including experience with large-scale product systems

Compensation US Zone 1: 236,300–319,700 USD; US Zone 2: 212,700–287,700 USD; US Zone 3: 189,000–255,800 USD. The range above is the expected annual salary/OTE for this role, subject to change. OTE is for sales roles only. Salary/OTE is one component of Dropbox’s total rewards package. All regular employees are eligible for the corporate bonus program or a sales incentive (target included in OTE) as well as stock in the form of RSUs. Dropbox takes a number of factors into account when determining individual starting pay, including job and level, location/metropolitan area, skillset, and peer compensation. We target most new hire offers between the minimum up to the middle of the range. Dropbox uses the zip code of an employee’s remote work location to determine which metropolitan pay range we use. Current US Zone locations are as follows:

US Zone 1: San Francisco metro, New York City metro, or Seattle metro

US Zone 2: California (outside SF metro), Colorado, Connecticut (outside NYC metro), Delaware, Illinois (Chicago metro), Indiana (Chicago metro), Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Chicago metro), New Hampshire, New Jersey (outside NYC metro), New York (outside NYC metro), Oregon, Pennsylvania (D.C. metro), Pennsylvania (outside NYC or DC metro), Texas (Austin metro), Virginia (DC metro), Washington (outside Seattle metro), Washington DC metro, West Virginia (DC metro), Wisconsin (Chicago metro)

US Zone 3: All other US locations

Benefits Competitive medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k) plan with a generous company match and immediate vesting

Flexible PTO/Paid Time Off, paid holidays, Volunteer Time Off, and more

Income Protection Plans: Life and disability insurance

Business Travel Protection: Travel medical and accident insurance

Perks Allowance to be used on wellness, learning and development, food and groceries, and more

Parental benefits including Parental Leave, Child and Adult Care, Day Care FSA, Fertility Benefits, Adoption and Surrogacy Support, and Lactation Support

Access to over 10,000 global co-working spaces

Dropbox is a Virtual First company and is open to hiring candidates in all authorized locations. Dropbox is an equal opportunity employer. We support members and allies of internal groups such as Asians at Dropbox, BlackDropboxers, enABLE, TODOS, Pridebox, Vets at Dropbox, and Women at Dropbox.

Company Description: Dropbox isn’t just a workplace—it’s a living lab for more enlightened ways of working. We’re a global community of bold visionaries and resourceful doers shaping the future of Dropbox and the future of work. Our Virtual First model combines distributed autonomy with human connection.

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