Senior Software Engineer, Machine learning- Search

Roku is the #1 TV streaming platform in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and we've set our sights on powering every television in the world. Roku pioneered streaming to the TV. Our mission is to be the TV streaming platform that connects the entire TV ecosystem. We connect consumers to the content they love, enable content publishers to build and monetize large audiences, and provide advertisers unique capabilities to engage consumers.

From your first day at Roku, you'll make a valuable - and valued - contribution. We're a fast-growing public company where no one is a bystander. We offer you the opportunity to delight millions of TV streamers around the world while gaining meaningful experience across a variety of disciplines.

About the role  

Our Search Platform sits at the heart of the Roku experience, powering voice, text, and visual discovery across 100M+ active accounts and every Roku-powered device worldwide.
 We own the entire stack —from ingesting & enriching a multi-million-title knowledge graph, to low-latency retrieval services and large-scale machine-learning systems that personalize results in real time. Our work doesn't just help users find shows; it drives core product surfaces (home-screen rows, browse hubs, Roku Voice, mobile app search) and fuels partner monetization. If you enjoy turning cutting-edge research into products used billions of times a day, you'll thrive here.

Roku's footprint has more than quadrupled in the past five years, and user expectations have leaped just as fast—think LLM-based query understanding, vector-DB retrieval, on-device models, and multimodal search (voice, text, image). We're now rebuilding our relevance stack for the next decade, blending classic IR with generative-AI techniques. You will be a technical leader spearheading that transformation. 

What you'll be doing 

• Apply state of the art ML on search using techniques in deep learning, bandits, transformers, LLMs, causal inference, and optimizations to make our users more delighted and engaged on the platform 
• Run online AB tests and analyze them against the critical business KPIs 
• Collaborate with US engineering teams as well as cross-functional teams to translate business requirements into technical specifications 
• Nurture our ML ecosystem to make it withstand scale, developer velocity and future business shifts 
• Provide technical leadership to drive technical and ML roadmap for search ranking and monetization 
• Help recruiting new engineers. Interview, train, and mentor new team members 
  
  We're excited if you have 
  
  
• 7+ years of experience (or PhD with 5 years of experience) applying Machine Learning to concrete problems at large-scale in domains like recommendation or search or ads 
• Strong CS fundamentals. Should be able covert ideas to code with ease 
• Good understanding of machine learning fundamentals like classification, deep neural nets, and sequence-based models. Familiarity with modern NLP stack and multi-modal representation learning is a plus 
• We'd love to see that you've worked with big data systems (Spark, S3, and Airflow) and can program (Java, Scala, or Python)  
• Good understanding of system architecture 
• Experience in big data technologies and streaming architecture, data pipelines, etc. 
• MS in Computer Science, Statistics, or related field, but a Ph.D. in CS or related fields is preferred 
  
• AI literacy and curiosity.You have either tried Gen AI in your previous work or outside of work or are curious about Gen AI and have explored it. 

Roku is committed to offering a diverse range of benefits as part of our compensation package to support our employees and their families. Our comprehensive benefits include global access to mental health and financial wellness support and resources. Local benefits include statutory and voluntary benefits which may include healthcare (medical, dental, and vision), life, accident, disability, commuter, and retirement options (401(k)/pension). Our employees can take time off work for vacation and other personal reasons to balance their evolving work and life needs. It's important to note that not every benefit is available in all locations or for every role. For details specific to your location, please consult with your recruiter.

Roku is a great place for people who want to work in a fast-paced environment where everyone is focused on the company's success rather than their own. We try to surround ourselves with people who are great at their jobs, who are easy to work with, and who keep their egos in check. We appreciate a sense of humor. We believe a fewer number of very talented folks can do more for less cost than a larger number of less talented teams. We're independent thinkers with big ideas who act boldly, move fast and accomplish extraordinary things through collaboration and trust. In short, at Roku you'll be part of a company that's changing how the world watches TV. 

We have a unique culture that we are proud of. We think of ourselves primarily as problem-solvers, which itself is a two-part idea. We come up with the solution, but the solution isn't real until it is built and delivered to the customer. That penchant for action gives us a pragmatic approach to innovation, one that has served us well since 2002. 

To learn more about Roku, our global footprint, and how we've grown, visit

By providing your information, you acknowledge that you want Roku to contact you about job roles, that you have read Roku's Applicant Privacy Notice, and understand that Roku will use your information as described in that notice. If you do not wish to receive any communications from Roku regarding this role or similar roles in the future, you may unsubscribe here at any time.