ML Research Engineer

About the Company

Maple is building AI agents that work for restaurants. These agents answer calls, take orders, book appointments, and handle real customer interactions over natural voice. Our mission is to build automated ontologies that model how businesses actually operate so our agents can adapt to them instantly.

Responsibilities

• Optimize speech recognition (ASR), large language models (LLMs), and text-to-speech (TTS) for real-world use
• Fine-tune LLMs with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), reinforcement learning (RL), and prompt engineering
• Integrate AI components into autonomous agents for complex tasks like scheduling and order-taking
• Create human-in-the-loop and automated systems to monitor performance and detect anomalies
• Develop pipelines to construct knowledge graphs from business data
• Work with infrastructure teams to scale models across GPU/TPU clusters and edge devices
• Manage rapid experimentation, training, and highly optimized production inference
• Lead evaluations, error analysis, and iterative improvements
• Balance research innovation with practical usability
• Publish research and contribute to open-source

Requirements

• 3-7+ years deploying impactful ML models in voice, NLP, knowledge graphs, or agent systems
• Deep knowledge in speech recognition, language models, RL/dialogue systems, TTS, or ontology systems
• Proficiency in PyTorch or JAX
• Experience with CUDA/Triton preferred
• Proven ability to minimize latency and resource use on GPUs/TPUs or edge hardware
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent

Benefits

• Competitive salary + meaningful equity
• Full health, dental, vision, 401k, and life insurance
• Unlimited PTO
• Tools, coffee, and "whatever-you-need-to-be-great" budgets