Ai/ml Engineer

Company Description VERSANT is a leading force in news, sports and entertainment - home to iconic and trusted brands that inspire, inform, and delight audiences. Our unique combination of content, technology and services enriches the cultural fabric, igniting passions, sparking conversations, and connecting people to what they love most.

As an independent, publicly traded company, VERSANT brings together powerhouse cable networks - including USA Network, CNBC, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Golf Channel - with dynamic digital and direct-to-consumer brands such as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass, and SportsEngine. Together, these businesses reflect our commitment to delivering exceptional experiences across every screen and service.

VERSANT is an industry-changing media company fueled by innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit. With a strong foundation and a forward-looking vision, VERSANT empowers creativity, embraces change, and drives connection in an ever-evolving world.

Job Description ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking an AI/ML Engineer with deep expertise in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI systems. In this role, you’ll design, build, and deploy intelligent systems that leverage generative models to create new digital capabilities. You will work end-to-end, from prototyping through deployment, collaborating with backend, frontend, and product peers to deliver production ready GenAI systems.

What You'll Do As a AI/ML Engineer on our team, you will:

• Design and implement LLM-powered applications, including chatbots, agents, and workflow automation tools.
• Develop retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems that combine proprietary data with foundation models.
• Fine-tune, adapt, or prompt-engineer LLMs for domain-specific use cases.
• Build production-grade inference services and optimize them for performance and cost.
• Integrate GenAI systems into larger platform architectures alongside backend and frontend engineers.
• Implement guardrails, evaluation metrics, and monitoring for LLM behavior, safety, and quality.
• Stay ahead of advances in generative AI, assessing opportunities to apply emerging techniques pragmatically.
• Document methods, share learnings, and mentor engineers on applied LLM/GenAI practices.

Qualifications WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on applied AI.
• Hands-on expertise with LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, and prompt engineering, with samples.
• Experience building RAG pipelines and integrating models into real-world systems.
• Proficiency with Python and ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, Hugging Face).
• Experience deploying AI systems into production with modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Familiarity with MLOps practices for LLMs (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, MLflow, Weights & Biases).
• Strong understanding of observability and evaluation for generative systems (bias, drift, hallucinations).
• Bonus: Experience with fine-tuning, instruction tuning, or RLHF.

BONUS POINTS FOR

• Experience with other large entertainment focused platforms, centered around being consumer-facing at a large scale
• Familiarity and hands-on exposure with MCP Servers and highly accessible and available API platforms
• Knowledge of microservices and event-driven architectures at enterprise scale
• Cloud-native, global scaling experience (AWS and their various tool offerings)
• Understanding of the mindset of “Fail Fast, Learn Fast” and continuous improvement

Fully Remote: This role has been designated as fully remote, meaning it is expected to be performed from a non-VERSANT worksite, typically an employee’s residence. Occasional travel is required and can range from within the country (typical, various times of the year) to global (not typical but still possible).

Additional Information As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

For LA County and City Residents Only: VERSANT will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories, or arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with relevant legal requirements, including the City of Los Angeles' Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, where applicable.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to candidateaccessibility@versantmedia.com.

VERSANT is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.