Sr Staff Machine Learning Engineer Jobs in USA with Visa Sponsorship
Sr Staff Machine Learning Engineers rank among the most visa-sponsored roles in U.S. tech. Employers filing H-1B visa petitions for this level consistently cite Computer Science or related engineering degrees, and many qualify for O-1A or EB-1 expedited pathways given the seniority. For detailed occupation requirements, see the O*NET profile.
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Get Access To All JobsWe exist to wow our customers. We know we're doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, "How did I ever live without Coupang?" Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we're collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.
We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurs surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.
Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what's possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.
Role Overview
As our Staff Software Engineer, ML infra Engineer for Search & Discovery organization, you will be in charge of designing and implementing durable & efficient software solutions that handle massive volume of structured and unstructured data needed to train complex ML models and efficiently serve them online.
The Search & Discovery organization is responsible for optimizing customers' navigation experience and driving long-term growth. Every week millions of customers use search in our app or on coupang.com, more than one third of them make purchases. Over half of the Coupang sales are directly attributed to search and recommendation. Many business initiatives and growth strategies are driven or boosted by ranking and recommendation.
This role is an opportunity to build scalable offline and online ML platforms to support ranking and recommendation, and business decision making. You will be handling billions of records of user interaction data, and petabytes of raw log files, and transforming them into data objects that can be easily consumed by engineers and scientists. You will also be responsible for serving complex ML models in real time to help millions of Coupang customers search and discover products. If you are passionate about big data engineering and scalable serving systems, you want to make real business impact, and you are a true problem solver, this is the right job for you.
What You Will Do
- Proactively drive the execution of end-to-end data platform, data quality roadmap for Search & Discovery ML efforts
- Take ownership, consolidate and optimize the Search & Discovery core data logging, processing, and ML model training pipelines
- Develop and scale data infrastructure that powers batch and real-time data processing, monitoring, and debugging for ML experiments
- Drive design and implementation of scalable ML based ranking system and online ML inference services
- Build strong cross-functional partnerships with Data Scientists, Analysts, Product Managers, Indexing Platform Engineers, Ranking Engineers and Data Platform Engineers to understand both the offline and online needs and deliver on those needs
- Research, analyze and select technical approaches for solving difficult and challenging development and integration problems, coach and mentor other engineers in process and methodologies
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, statistics or closely related fields
- 5 years of professional experience in applied machine learning
- Experience in machine learning, deep learning, and statistical modeling
- Proficiency in Python and/or Java, with experience in building production grade ML systems
Preferred Qualifications
- Computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, performance complexity, and implications of computer architecture on software performance (e.g., I/O and memory tuning)
- Experience with Big Data tools and ETL frameworks (Hadoop, Hive, Presto, Spark, Scala, Apache Airflow, etc.)
- Experience with ML frameworks such as Tensorflow and Pytorch
- Experience with deploying highly robust and scalable data pipelines processing petabytes of data
- Experience in managing mission critical services with high throughput and low latency
- Experience with integrating applications and platforms with cloud technologies (i.e, AWS and GCP)
- Strong verbal and written communication skills
- Ability to conduct meetings and make professional presentations, and explain complex concepts and technical material to non-technical users
- Experience with machine learning platform for search & discovery related rankings is a strong plus
Pay & Benefits
Our compensation reflects the cost of living across several US geographic markets. At Coupang, your base pay is one part of your total compensation.
The base pay for this position ranges from $174,000K/year to $299,000K/year. Pay is based on several factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
General Description of All Benefits
- Medical/Dental/Vision/Life, AD&D insurance
- Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) & Health Savings Account (HSA)
- Long-term/Short-term Disability
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) program
- 401K Plan with Company Match
- 18-21 days of the Paid Time Off (PTO) a year based on the tenure
- 12 Public Holidays
- Paid Parental leave
- Pre-tax commuter benefits
- MTV - [Free] Electric Car Charging Station
General Description of Other Compensation
"Other Compensation" includes, but is not limited to, bonuses, equity, or other forms of compensation that would be offered to the hired applicant in addition to their established salary range or wage scale.
Recruitment Process and Others
Recruitment Process
- Application Review - Phone Interview - Onsite (or Virtual Onsite) Interview – Offer
- The exact nature of the recruitment process may vary according to the specific job and may be changed due to scheduling or other circumstances.
- Interview schedules and the results will be informed to the applicant via the e-mail address submitted at the application stage
Details to Consider
- This job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.
- Coupang has the right to rescind an offer of employment if a candidate is found to have submitted false information as part of the application process.
- Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran's benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.
Privacy Notice
Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below: https://www.coupang.jobs/privacy-policy/
Coupang is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to actual or perceived race (including traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and protective hair styles), color, religion, religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices), sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding), gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ancestry, national origin (including language use restrictions), age (40 and over), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C status, family status (including but not limited to marital or domestic partnership status), military or veteran status, use of a trained dog guide or service animal, political activities or affiliations, ancestry, citizenship, family and medical leave status, status as a victim of any violent crime, or any other characteristic or class protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Coupang is also committed to providing a safe work environment for its employees and its consumers.
If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application of recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at usrecruiting@coupang.com.
Job Requisition # 8925
We exist to wow our customers. We know we're doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, "How did I ever live without Coupang?" Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we're collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.
We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurs surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day.
Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what's possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.
Role Overview
As our Staff Software Engineer, ML infra Engineer for Search & Discovery organization, you will be in charge of designing and implementing durable & efficient software solutions that handle massive volume of structured and unstructured data needed to train complex ML models and efficiently serve them online.
The Search & Discovery organization is responsible for optimizing customers' navigation experience and driving long-term growth. Every week millions of customers use search in our app or on coupang.com, more than one third of them make purchases. Over half of the Coupang sales are directly attributed to search and recommendation. Many business initiatives and growth strategies are driven or boosted by ranking and recommendation.
This role is an opportunity to build scalable offline and online ML platforms to support ranking and recommendation, and business decision making. You will be handling billions of records of user interaction data, and petabytes of raw log files, and transforming them into data objects that can be easily consumed by engineers and scientists. You will also be responsible for serving complex ML models in real time to help millions of Coupang customers search and discover products. If you are passionate about big data engineering and scalable serving systems, you want to make real business impact, and you are a true problem solver, this is the right job for you.
What You Will Do
- Proactively drive the execution of end-to-end data platform, data quality roadmap for Search & Discovery ML efforts
- Take ownership, consolidate and optimize the Search & Discovery core data logging, processing, and ML model training pipelines
- Develop and scale data infrastructure that powers batch and real-time data processing, monitoring, and debugging for ML experiments
- Drive design and implementation of scalable ML based ranking system and online ML inference services
- Build strong cross-functional partnerships with Data Scientists, Analysts, Product Managers, Indexing Platform Engineers, Ranking Engineers and Data Platform Engineers to understand both the offline and online needs and deliver on those needs
- Research, analyze and select technical approaches for solving difficult and challenging development and integration problems, coach and mentor other engineers in process and methodologies
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, statistics or closely related fields
- 5 years of professional experience in applied machine learning
- Experience in machine learning, deep learning, and statistical modeling
- Proficiency in Python and/or Java, with experience in building production grade ML systems
Preferred Qualifications
- Computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, performance complexity, and implications of computer architecture on software performance (e.g., I/O and memory tuning)
- Experience with Big Data tools and ETL frameworks (Hadoop, Hive, Presto, Spark, Scala, Apache Airflow, etc.)
- Experience with ML frameworks such as Tensorflow and Pytorch
- Experience with deploying highly robust and scalable data pipelines processing petabytes of data
- Experience in managing mission critical services with high throughput and low latency
- Experience with integrating applications and platforms with cloud technologies (i.e, AWS and GCP)
- Strong verbal and written communication skills
- Ability to conduct meetings and make professional presentations, and explain complex concepts and technical material to non-technical users
- Experience with machine learning platform for search & discovery related rankings is a strong plus
Pay & Benefits
Our compensation reflects the cost of living across several US geographic markets. At Coupang, your base pay is one part of your total compensation.
The base pay for this position ranges from $174,000K/year to $299,000K/year. Pay is based on several factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
General Description of All Benefits
- Medical/Dental/Vision/Life, AD&D insurance
- Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) & Health Savings Account (HSA)
- Long-term/Short-term Disability
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) program
- 401K Plan with Company Match
- 18-21 days of the Paid Time Off (PTO) a year based on the tenure
- 12 Public Holidays
- Paid Parental leave
- Pre-tax commuter benefits
- MTV - [Free] Electric Car Charging Station
General Description of Other Compensation
"Other Compensation" includes, but is not limited to, bonuses, equity, or other forms of compensation that would be offered to the hired applicant in addition to their established salary range or wage scale.
Recruitment Process and Others
Recruitment Process
- Application Review - Phone Interview - Onsite (or Virtual Onsite) Interview – Offer
- The exact nature of the recruitment process may vary according to the specific job and may be changed due to scheduling or other circumstances.
- Interview schedules and the results will be informed to the applicant via the e-mail address submitted at the application stage
Details to Consider
- This job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.
- Coupang has the right to rescind an offer of employment if a candidate is found to have submitted false information as part of the application process.
- Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran's benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.
Privacy Notice
Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below: https://www.coupang.jobs/privacy-policy/
Coupang is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to actual or perceived race (including traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and protective hair styles), color, religion, religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices), sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding), gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ancestry, national origin (including language use restrictions), age (40 and over), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C status, family status (including but not limited to marital or domestic partnership status), military or veteran status, use of a trained dog guide or service animal, political activities or affiliations, ancestry, citizenship, family and medical leave status, status as a victim of any violent crime, or any other characteristic or class protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Coupang is also committed to providing a safe work environment for its employees and its consumers.
If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application of recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at usrecruiting@coupang.com.
Job Requisition # 8925
See all 14,746+ Sr Staff Machine Learning Engineer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Sr Staff Machine Learning Engineer roles.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding Visa Sponsorship as a Sr Staff Machine Learning Engineer
Target companies with established ML infrastructure
Large tech firms and AI-first startups with dedicated ML platforms teams sponsor this role most reliably. They have immigration counsel on retainer and treat H-1B sponsorship as a standard hiring cost, not an exception requiring executive approval.
Frame your degree field precisely on applications
H-1B specialty occupation requires a degree in a directly related field. Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Statistics are strong matches. A degree in a loosely related field increases RFE risk, so frame your coursework and transcripts carefully with your employer's counsel.
Highlight publications, patents, or model deployments at scale
Staff and Sr Staff roles sit at or near the principal level. Evidence of industry-recognized contributions, open-source projects, or peer-reviewed work strengthens both your H-1B petition and opens the door to O-1A or EB-1A self-petition options.
Ask about the company's I-140 filing timeline upfront
At this seniority, many employers will file an I-140 immigrant petition concurrently or shortly after H-1B approval. Knowing whether EB-2 or EB-3 sponsorship is on offer matters significantly for long-term planning, especially for Indian or Chinese nationals facing backlogs.
Understand cap-exempt employer options if you miss the H-1B lottery
Universities, nonprofit research labs, and government-affiliated institutions are H-1B cap-exempt, meaning they can file year-round without lottery risk. Senior ML roles exist at places like national labs and research universities, and sponsorship there sidesteps the annual cap entirely.
Use Migrate Mate to filter roles by verified sponsorship history
Not every job posting that mentions visa sponsorship follows through at the offer stage. Migrate Mate surfaces employers with documented sponsorship activity for ML engineering roles, reducing time spent on applications that stall once immigration costs enter the conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do employers typically sponsor H-1B visas for Sr Staff Machine Learning Engineer roles?
Yes, sponsorship rates for this title are high relative to the broader tech job market. Sr Staff ML Engineers command enough strategic value that most large tech employers absorb H-1B visa costs without hesitation. You're most likely to encounter resistance at early-stage startups without dedicated HR or legal infrastructure for immigration filings. Migrate Mate lets you filter specifically for employers with verified sponsorship history at this seniority level.
What degree qualifies for H-1B sponsorship as a Machine Learning Engineer?
A bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or Statistics is the standard qualifying credential for this role under H-1B specialty occupation rules. USCIS looks for a direct relationship between the degree field and the job duties. A general engineering or business degree without strong quantitative coursework can trigger a Request for Evidence. Relevant graduate degrees, especially in ML or AI, significantly strengthen the petition.
Can a Sr Staff ML Engineer qualify for an O-1A visa instead of H-1B?
Potentially yes, and it's worth evaluating seriously at this level. The O-1A requires evidence of extraordinary ability, typically demonstrated through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, patents, significant open-source contributions, or a high salary relative to peers. Sr Staff engineers who have published research, led breakthrough model deployments, or received industry awards often meet multiple O-1A criteria. Unlike H-1B, the O-1A has no lottery and can be filed year-round.
How does Indian or Chinese nationality affect sponsorship timelines for this role?
H-1B approval and work authorization are unaffected by nationality, but employer-sponsored green card timelines are heavily impacted. Indian and Chinese nationals face employment-based visa backlogs measured in decades for EB-2 and EB-3 categories. At the Sr Staff level, it's worth asking employers whether they support EB-1A or EB-1B (Outstanding Researcher) pathways, which currently have no backlog for any nationality and offer a substantially faster route to permanent residence.
What is the H-1B approval rate for Machine Learning Engineer petitions?
USCIS doesn't publish approval rates broken down to this specific title, but ML engineering petitions filed under Computer Occupations SOC codes consistently see approval rates above 90% when the petition is well-documented and filed by experienced immigration counsel. The main risk factor is a Request for Evidence challenging specialty occupation status, which is more common for roles where the degree requirement isn't explicitly stated in the job description. Clear job duty language in the LCA and offer letter reduces this risk substantially.
What is the prevailing wage requirement for sponsored Sr Staff Machine Learning Engineer jobs?
U.S. employers sponsoring a visa must pay at least the prevailing wage, which is what workers in the same role, area, and experience level typically earn. The Department of Labor sets this rate to make sure companies aren't hiring foreign workers simply because they'd accept lower pay than a U.S. worker. It varies by job title, location, and experience. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search page.