Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendations

Vumedi

Oakland, CA, United StatesunknownPosted Oct 16, 2026

About the role

About Vumedi:

Vumedi is the world's largest video education platform for physicians, trusted by more than 250,000 doctors worldwide to stay current on the latest clinical research, surgical techniques, and medical innovations.

Every day, physicians come to Vumedi looking for the right knowledge at the right moment, whether they're preparing for a procedure, researching a rare condition, or learning from experts across thousands of specialties.

We're building the next generation of that experience.

Our vision is to transform how doctors discover medical knowledge by combining large language models, retrieval systems, semantic search, and personalized recommendations into an intelligent learning platform unlike anything else in healthcare.

If you've built recommendation systems, search platforms, ranking algorithms, or AI-powered discovery experiences, we'd love to talk.

The Opportunity:

We're looking for a Principal ML Engineer to lead the architecture and development of Vumedi's AI-powered discovery platform.

This isn't about adding an AI feature to an existing product.

You'll help define how hundreds of thousands of physicians discover knowledge through intelligent retrieval, semantic search, personalized recommendations, and LLM-powered experiences.

Working directly with our CTO, you'll have significant influence over both technical strategy and implementation: from evaluating emerging AI technologies to designing production systems that deliver highly relevant educational content at scale.

This is a rare opportunity to apply modern AI techniques to a mission that directly improves patient care around the world.

What You'll Build:

You'll own the technical direction behind Vumedi's next-generation discovery platform, including:

Designing intelligent recommendation systems that personalize educational content for physicians.

Building LLM-powered discovery experiences that understand clinical intent and not just keywords.

Developing semantic search, retrieval, ranking, and recommendation pipelines using embeddings, vector search, and modern retrieval architectures.

Designing production-grade knowledge graph RAG systems that combine medical knowledge with generative AI.

Evaluating and implementing emerging AI technologies, frameworks, and infrastructure as the ecosystem rapidly evolves.

Building scalable inference and retrieval services capable of serving physicians around the world.

Partnering closely with Product, Data Science, and Engineering to rapidly prototype, iterate, and launch new AI capabilities.

Defining the long-term technical architecture for AI across the Vumedi platform.

While this is a Principal-level architecture role, we're looking for someone who enjoys building. You'll move comfortably between whiteboard discussions, architectural design, experimentation, and production code.

What We're Looking For:

We're less interested in checking every technology box than finding someone who has built intelligent discovery systems at scale.

Ideal candidates have experience building one or more of the following:

Recommendation systems

Search relevance and ranking

Semantic search

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

Vector search and embeddings

Knowledge retrieval systems

Personalized content discovery

AI-powered user experiences

You may have worked on products involving:

Content recommendations

Marketplace ranking

Search infrastructure

Feed ranking

Personalized discovery

Knowledge graphs

Enterprise search

AI assistants

Technical Experience:

We're excited by candidates who have experience with many of the following:

Production experience building LLM-powered applications

Retrieval pipelines, embeddings, and vector databases

Modern AI frameworks and orchestration tools

Distributed systems operating at meaningful scale

Cloud-native architectures

Python and modern backend development

Experimentation, evaluation, and iterative model improvement

You don't need experience with every technology we use today. We care far more about your ability to solve difficult discovery and AI problems than familiarity with a specific framework.

Why This Role Is Different:

Many companies are adding AI features.

We're rethinking how physicians discover knowledge.

Medical education presents one of the most challenging retrieval problems in AI:

Massive amounts of highly specialized content

Complex user intent

Clinical context

Constantly evolving medical knowledge

High expectations for relevance and trust

You'll help define how AI can responsibly connect physicians with the information they need to improve patient care.

Why Work at Vumedi:

Work on problems that matter: Your work helps physicians learn new procedures, adopt new treatments, and ultimately improve outcomes for patients worldwide.

Build something from the ground up: You'll shape the future of AI discovery at Vumedi rather than optimizing a small piece of an already mature platform.

Work directly with technical leadership: Partner closely with our CTO and engineering leaders on long-term architecture and product strategy.

Own meaningful technical decisions: From retrieval architecture to recommendation systems to AI infrastructure, you'll influence how the platform evolves for years to come.

Join a collaborative engineering culture: Work alongside engineers, product leaders, and data experts across our Oakland headquarters and engineering office in Zagreb, Croatia.

Learn more about Vumedi

Responsibilities

  • Lead the design and development of machine learning systems for content recommendations
  • Develop, evaluate, and improve recommendation algorithms and ranking models
  • Collaborate with engineering and product teams to deliver recommendation features

Qualifications

  • Extensive experience in machine learning and recommendation systems
  • Strong software engineering and programming skills
  • Experience leading technical projects and collaborating across teams

Skills mentioned

PythonMachine LearningRecommendation SystemsRetrieval-Augmented GenerationLarge Language ModelsEmbeddingsSystem DesignDistributed SystemsCloud ComputingBackend Development

About Vumedi

Vumedi is the largest video education platform for doctors worldwide, dedicated to advancing medical education through innovative video-based learning. Our mission is to empower healthcare professionals by providing them with access to the latest clinical knowledge and surgical techniques from experts around the globe. We curate a vast library of high-quality educational content, enabling users to enhance their skills, stay informed about industry trends, and improve patient outcomes. We are headquartered in Oakland, CA, and have additional offices in Minneapolis, MN, and Zagreb, Croatia.

Software Development201-500 employeesOakland, California

H-1B sponsorship history

Historical employer filing data was found for Vumedi. The employer record includes 3 historical certified applications. This is employer-level history, not a guarantee that this role currently offers sponsorship.