Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Ad Tech Engineering

Teamwork makes the stream work.

Roku is changing how the world watches TV

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 Roku 

Roku is the leading TV streaming platform in the US, with a mission to connect the entire TV ecosystem by helping consumers discover content, enabling publishers to grow audiences, and giving advertisers powerful ways to engage viewers.

About the Team

The Ad Engineering team builds the platform behind Roku’s advertising business. Within Ad Engineering, the Creative Services team owns the infrastructure and tooling that helps advertisers produce, optimize, and deploy creatives at scale. About the Role We are hiring a Senior Engineer to lead the architecture and implementation of a next-generation generative AI-powered video creative platform. This is a high-impact role focused on building a self-serve product that makes high-quality video ad creation more accessible to advertisers.

You will architect and build the end-to-end system for AI-powered video creative generation, from advertiser input through production output. You will work closely with ML, backend, frontend, and creative stakeholders to deliver a production-ready product that improves speed, quality, and scalability for video ad creation on Roku.

What You’ll Do

• Define the technical architecture and overall stack for AI-powered video creative generation. 


• Evaluate generative AI video models, LLMs, multimodal systems, and orchestration frameworks for product use.


• Design and build the pipeline from advertiser input to model inference, output validation, and integration with Roku creative APIs.


• Build production-grade systems with strong error handling, output validation, compliance, and brand safety guardrails.


• Partner cross-functionally with ML, backend, frontend, and creative teams to iterate quickly based on feedback and business needs.


• Drive technical decisions that directly influence product quality, scalability, and time-to-market.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field. 


• Experience building video creative or video ad generation systems, ideally in advertising or media environments.


• Strong understanding of modern generative AI video models and the ability to evaluate latency, cost, and quality tradeoffs.


• Solid experience with LLM and multimodal pipelines, including prompting, orchestration, tradeoff analysis, and error handling.


• Experience deploying ML systems in production, including model serving, containerization, CI/CD, and monitoring.


• Hands-on experience with modern ML frameworks and tooling such as PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers or Diffusers, LoRA or PEFT, and vector databases for RAG workflows.


• Experience designing evaluation approaches for generative systems using human review, automated metrics, and A/B testing.


• Strong software engineering fundamentals and solid production experience in Java or Python.


• Ability to translate ambiguous business or creative requirements into practical technical solutions and communicate tradeoffs clearly to cross-functional partners.

Preferred Qualifications

• Startup or founding-engineer experience, or experience leading fast-moving GenAI product initiatives.


• Experience owning a consumer-facing or self-serve product from architecture through production deployment and operational support.


• Deeper background in computer vision or video ML, including modern CV and diffusion-based architectures.


• Experience improving inference cost and latency, and building responsible AI guardrails such as safety, compliance, IP, or human review mechanisms.


• Open-source contributions or publications in ML or generative AI.

Our Hybrid Work Approach

Roku fosters an inclusive and collaborative environment where teams work in the office Monday through Thursday. Fridays are flexible for remote work except for employees whose roles are required to be in the office five days a week or employees who are in offices with a five day in office policy.

Benefits

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). Employees are supported in taking time off, in accordance with local leave policies and other personal needs to support 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.

Accommodations

Roku welcomes applicants of all backgrounds and provides reasonable accommodations and adjustments in accordance with applicable law. If you require reasonable accommodation at any point in the hiring process, please direct your inquiries to [email protected].

The Roku Culture

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 https://www.weareroku.com/factsheet.

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