Parspec · 11 hours ago
Engineering Manager - Applied ML (Search & Recommendations)
San Mateo, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Mid, Senior Level
3+ years expParspec is revolutionizing material procurement for the construction industry by digitizing and organizing product data. They are seeking a technical Engineering Manager to lead their Search Retrieval, Ranking, and Recommendations, overseeing the architecture of their Discovery Engine and managing a team of Applied ML engineers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Building MaterialConstructionProcurement
Responsibilities
Own the architecture for our hybrid search engine, blending keyword-based retrieval with dense vector embeddings to improve precision and recall
Design and scale personalization algorithms that suggest products based on project specs, historical data, and cross-catalog compatibility
Lead the fine-tuning of open-source and proprietary LLMs/encoders for specialized construction domain tasks, including NER and relationship extraction from complex documents
Architect and optimize our vector database strategy for high-concurrency retrieval and low-latency ranking
Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of Machine Learning Engineers
Work closely with product managers, UX designers, and business leadership to integrate AI components into fully functional systems
Participate in the complete product lifecycle from concept design to development, testing, and deployment
Build products that handle large data volumes efficiently while remaining highly scalable for new clients
Design end-to-end data and ML pipelines for seamless production integration and monitoring
Work with the leadership team on research efforts to explore cutting-edge technologies
Uphold a culture of excellence by maintaining high standards in code quality, innovation, and rigorous experimentation
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's or Master's degree (PhD preferred) in Science or Engineering with strong programming and analytical skills
3+ years managing ML teams, with a track record of shipping production-grade search or recommendation products
Deep conceptual understanding and hands-on experience in Search, Ranking, Recommendation systems, or NLP/Document Extraction
Expertise in Python (NumPy, scikit-learn, pandas) and training deep learning models using PyTorch or TensorFlow
Ability to drive high standards for clean, efficient, and bug-free code
Preferred
Deep experience with Learning to Rank (LTR), BM25, and hybrid retrieval strategies
Hands-on experience with Vector Databases (Pinecone, Qdrant, Milvus) and optimizing embedding spaces for domain-specific retrieval
Expertise in fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) and Bi-Encoders/Cross-Encoders for specialized semantic search
Experience building evaluation frameworks for search (nDCG, MRR) and managing the lifecycle of embedding deployments
Hands-on experience with agentic frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen, or CrewAI) for building complex, multi-step reasoning chains
A track record of publications in top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, SIGIR, KDD, ACL) or significant contributions to open-source ML projects
Experience working with geographically distributed teams across multiple time zones
Benefits
Family insurance coverage
Free health teleconsultations
Learning/upskilling budgets
Equity in the company
Flexible hours and a hybrid work setup
Unlimited PTO
Company
Parspec
Parspec is an AI-native software platform that streamlines B2B procurement processes within the construction supply chain.
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Parspec has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1)
2022 (1)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$31.5MKey Investors
ThresholdInnovation Endeavors
2025-07-08Series A· $20M
2024-02-27Seed· $11.5M
2022-01-01Seed
Leadership Team
Forest Flager
CEO and Cofounder
Pratyush Havelia
CTO & Co-Founder
Recent News
alleywatch.com
2025-07-14
Company data provided by crunchbase