Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Frontier-model providers sit in a distinct part of the SaaS ecosystem, supplying the core AI capability that other software companies embed into products. This Senior or Staff MLE role is notable because it blends model development with real enterprise delivery, reflecting how AI infrastructure firms increasingly operate as both platform and solutions partner for developers and businesses building LLM-powered applications.
For a long-term SaaS career, the work maps to durable problems that recur across AI-native products: turning ambiguous customer needs into measurable model outcomes, building evaluation discipline, and shipping systems that remain reliable after deployment. Experience that spans customization, retrieval and agent workflows, and production iteration tends to transfer well across SaaS contexts, from AI feature teams inside established vendors to platform companies building tooling for other developers.
The role fits engineers who prefer broad ownership across the lifecycle, from scoping through deployment, and who are comfortable collaborating closely with stakeholders outside pure engineering. It should appeal to professionals aiming to deepen technical leadership while staying hands-on, particularly those drawn to roles where customer-facing problem framing and core model performance influence sit side by side.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
Who are we?
Our mission is to scale intelligence to serve humanity. We’re training and deploying frontier models for developers and enterprises who are building AI systems to power magical experiences like content generation, semantic search, RAG, and agents. We believe that our work is instrumental to the widespread adoption of AI.
We obsess over what we build. Each one of us is responsible for contributing to increasing the capabilities of our models and the value they drive for our customers. We like to work hard and move fast to do what’s best for our customers.
Cohere is a team of researchers, engineers, designers, and more, who are passionate about their craft. Each person is one of the best in the world at what they do. We believe that a diverse range of perspectives is a requirement for building great products.
Join us on our mission and shape the future!
Why This Role Is Different
This is not a typical “Applied Scientist” or “ML Engineer” role. As a Member of Technical Staff, Applied ML, you will:
Work directly with enterprise customers on problems that push LLMs to their limits.
You’ll rapidly understand customer domains, design custom LLM solutions, and deliver production-ready models that solve high-value, real-world problems.
Train and customize frontier models — not just use APIs.
You’ll leverage Cohere’s full stack: CPT, post-training, retrieval + agent integrations, model evaluations, and SOTA modeling techniques.
Influence the capabilities of Cohere’s foundation models.
Techniques, datasets, evaluations, and insights you develop for customers will directly shape the next generation of Cohere’s frontier models.
Operate with an early-startup level of ownership inside a frontier-model company.
This role combines the breadth of an early-stage CTO with the infrastructure and scale of a deep-learning lab.
Wear multiple hats, set a high technical bar, and define what Applied ML at Cohere becomes.
Few roles in the industry combine application, research, customer-facing engineering, and core-model influence as directly as this one.
What You’ll Do
Technical Leadership & Solution Design
Lead the design and delivery of custom LLM solutions for enterprise customers.
Translate ambiguous business problems into well-framed ML problems with clear success criteria and evaluation methodologies.
Modeling, Customization & Foundations Contribution
Build custom models using Cohere’s foundation model stack, CPT recipes, post-training pipelines (including RLVR), and data assets.
Develop SOTA modeling techniques that directly enhance model performance for customer use-cases.
Contribute improvements back to the foundation-model stack — including new capabilities, tuning strategies, and evaluation frameworks.
Customer-Facing Technical Impact
Work closely with enterprise customers to identify high-value opportunities where LLMs can unlock transformative impact.
Provide technical leadership across discovery, scoping, modeling, deployment, agent workflows, and post-deployment iteration.
Establish evaluation frameworks and success metrics for custom modeling engagements.
Team Mentorship & Organizational Impact
Mentor engineers across distributed teams.
Drive clarity in ambiguous situations, build alignment, and raise engineering and modeling quality across the organization.
You May Be a Good Fit If You Have:
Technical Foundations
Strong ML fundamentals and the ability to frame complex, ambiguous problems as ML solutions.
Fluency with Python and core ML/LLM frameworks.
Experience working with large-scale datasets and distributed training or inference pipelines.
Understanding of LLM architectures, tuning techniques (CPT, post-training), and evaluation methodologies.
Demonstrated ability to meaningfully shape LLM performance.
Experience & Leadership
Experience engaging directly with customers or stakeholders to design and deliver ML-powered solutions.
A track record of technical leadership at a team level.
A broad view of the ML research landscape and a desire to push the state of the art.
Mindset
Bias toward action, high ownership, and comfort with ambiguity.
Humility and strong collaboration instincts.
A deep conviction that AI should meaningfully empower people and organizations.
Join Us
This is a pivotal moment in Cohere’s history. As an MTS in Applied ML, you will define not only what we build — but how the world experiences AI. If you're excited about building custom models, solving generational problems for global organizations, and shaping frontier-model capabilities, we’d love to meet you.
If some of the above doesn’t line up perfectly with your experience, we still encourage you to apply!
We value and celebrate diversity and strive to create an inclusive work environment for all. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and are committed to providing equal opportunities. Should you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, please submit an Accommodations Request Form, and we will work together to meet your needs.
Full-Time Employees at Cohere enjoy these Perks:
🤝 An open and inclusive culture and work environment
🧑💻 Work closely with a team on the cutting edge of AI research
🍽 Weekly lunch stipend, in-office lunches & snacks
🦷 Full health and dental benefits, including a separate budget to take care of your mental health
🐣 100% Parental Leave top-up for up to 6 months
🎨 Personal enrichment benefits towards arts and culture, fitness and well-being, quality time, and workspace improvement
🏙 Remote-flexible, offices in Toronto, New York, San Francisco, London and Paris, as well as a co-working stipend
✈️ 6 weeks of vacation (30 working days!)
