ML Engineer - Personalization & Recommendation Systems

About Krea

At Krea, we are building next-generation AI creative tools.

We're dedicated to making AI intuitive and controllable for creatives - our mission is to build tools that empower human creativity, not replace it. We believe AI is a new medium that allows us to express ourselves through various formats - text, images, video, sound, and even 3D. We're building better, smarter, and more controllable tools to harness this medium. We recently took this a step forward with the launch of Krea 2 , our first foundation model, built completely from scratch for aesthetic diversity and stylistic control.

We've raised over $83M and are backed by world-class investors such as a16z, Bain Capital, and Abstract. We work full-time and in-person at our waterfront office in San Francisco. We care about creativity: our team includes musicians, designers, visual artists, and engineers.

This role

We’re looking for an ML Engineer to architect and build Krea’s personalization and recommendation systems from scratch. You’ll have full ownership over how we understand user taste, curate content, and adapt generative models to individual aesthetics.

This is a role at the intersection of recommendation systems, representation learning, and generative image and video tools.

What you’ll do

Architect and build Krea’s personalization and recommendation stack from the ground up, owning the technical direction end to end

Design algorithms to model user preference and taste, enabling Krea’s models to adapt to individual styles and aesthetics

Build high-quality, curated feeds that balance exploration, personalization, and aesthetic coherence

Work directly with the our model and research team to co-design personalization mechanisms that influence how our generative models learn, adapt, and express style

Contribute to personalized image generation research, with a focus on style, taste and subjective quality

Collaborate closely with product, design, and research to define what “good personalization” means in a creative context

Take systems from research and prototyping through production, iteration, and continuous improvement

What we’re looking for

Strong experience building recommendation systems or personalized feeds from scratch

Proven ability to design and ship high-quality curated content experiences

Experience working with media-based personalization (image, video preferred; music or other modalities also welcome)

Solid foundations in machine learning, representation learning, and modern deep learning techniques

Strong Python skills and experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX

Ability to operate independently, make architectural decisions, and own complex systems end to end

Nice to have

Experience with large-scale data systems and production ML infrastructure

Prior work on or familiarity with diffusion models or generative image systems

Background in embeddings, similarity search, ranking, or aesthetic evaluation

Interest in creative tools, art, design, or generative media

What we offer

Team : Work alongside a world-class team building the future of AI creative tooling

Impact : Significant scope and company-wide impact

Competitive compensation : generous salary & equity packages

Health & wellness : 100% health & 99% dental/vision insurance premiums covered for employees, health FSA accounts, & long-term disability coverage

Time off : Flexible PTO policy

Financial planning : 401k with a 4% company-sponsored match

Meals in the office : breakfast, lunch, dinner - you name it, we'll cover it

Transit : Ubers covered to & from the office

Sponsorship : We're open to sponsoring international visas where we can (e.g., STEM OPT, OPT, H-1B, O-1, E-3).

And more!

Please note the above benefits & perks are for full-time employees