Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Drive

About the Team DoorDash Drive powers deliveries placed through merchants' own channels—including their websites, mobile apps, and phone orders—using DoorDash's logistics network. The Drive Machine Learning team builds the prediction and intelligence systems that power this business, including delivery and pickup time estimation, merchant prep-time prediction, order release optimization, logistics decision-making, and AI-powered delivery quality signals. Drive presents a unique machine learning challenge. Every merchant has different operational workflows, preparation patterns, and customer expectations, requiring models that generalize across millions of deliveries while adapting to highly diverse merchant behavior. Our team has significant opportunities to improve prediction accuracy, optimize logistics decisions, and build AI-native experiences that directly improve merchant, consumer, and dasher outcomes. About the Role As a Machine Learning Engineer on the Drive team, you'll own machine learning systems end-to-end—from feature engineering and model development to experimentation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous iteration. Your work will span several high-impact problem areas: Build next-generation machine learning models for delivery ETA, pickup ETA, merchant prep-time estimation, and order release prediction that improve reliability for merchants and consumers. Develop deep learning models that leverage large-scale spatiotemporal, marketplace, and behavioral signals to improve prediction accuracy. Apply reinforcement learning and optimization techniques to improve logistics decision-making, assignment strategies, and marketplace efficiency. Build AI-native product experiences using large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs). For example, transform pickup photos, item verification flows, receipts, and drop-off images into structured quality signals that help verify orders, prevent delivery defects, and improve issue resolution. Design and run rigorous online experiments, production monitoring, and model iteration to continuously improve performance. Partner closely with software engineers, product managers, data scientists, and platform teams to bring new machine learning capabilities into production at scale. You'll have the opportunity to work across traditional machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, optimization, and multimodal AI while solving some of the most challenging logistics problems at DoorDash. You're excited about this opportunity because... You enjoy solving large-scale machine learning problems that directly impact millions of deliveries. You have a strong sense of ownership and enjoy taking models from research through production. You're comfortable working in ambiguous environments where experimentation and iteration drive product decisions. You care about both model quality and production reliability. You're excited to work across a diverse set of ML techniques—from neural networks and optimization to multimodal AI. You collaborate well across engineering, product, and data science teams. We’re excited about you because… 5+ years of industry experience building and shipping production machine learning systems with measurable business impact (Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD). Strong experience developing production machine learning models using modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and distributed data processing technologies such as Spark and Airflow. Experience building, deploying, monitoring, and maintaining production ML systems end-to-end. Strong software engineering skills in Python and experience with modern ML infrastructure and tooling. Deep expertise in at least one of the following areas: Deep Learning Reinforcement Learning Optimization / Operations Research Large Language Models (LLMs) or Vision-Language Models (VLMs) Experience applying machine learning to estimation, ranking, prediction, optimization, or decision-making problems at production scale. Hands-on experience with LLMs or VLMs is a strong plus. Experience in logistics, marketplaces, or delivery platforms is helpful but not required. Proficiency using AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) throughout the software development lifecycle. You are located or are planning to relocate to San Francisco, CA, Sunnyvale, CA, or Seattle, WA. Compensation The successful candidate's starting pay will fall within the pay range listed below and is determined based on job-related factors including, but not limited to, skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. Base salary is localized according to an employee’s work location. Ranges are market-dependent and may be modified in the future. In addition to base salary, the compensation for this role includes opportunities for equity grants. Talk to your recruiter for more information. DoorDash cares about you and your overall well-being. That’s why we offer a comprehensive benefits package to all regular employees, which includes a 401(k) plan with employer matching, 16 weeks of paid parental leave, wellness benefits, commuter benefits match, paid time off and paid sick leave in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act). DoorDash also offers medical, dental, and vision benefits, 11 paid holidays, disability and basic life insurance, family-forming assistance, and a mental health program, among others. To learn more about our benefits, visit our careers page here . See below for paid time off details: For salaried roles: flexible paid time off/vacation, plus 80 hours of paid sick time per year. For hourly roles: vacation accrued at about 1 hour for every 25.97 hours worked (e.g. about 6.7 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 3.4 hours/month if working 20 hours/week), and paid sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 30 hours worked (e.g. about 5.8 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 2.9 hours/month if working 20 hours/week). The national base pay ranges for this position within the United States, including Illinois and Colorado. I4 $137,100 — $201,600 USD I5 $167,800 — $246,800 USD I6 $203,500 — $299,300 USD About DoorDash At DoorDash, our mission to empower local economies shapes how our team members move quickly, learn, and reiterate in order to make impactful decisions that display empathy for our range of users—from Dashers to merchant partners to consumers. We are a technology and logistics company that started by enabling door-to-door delivery, and we are looking for team members who can help us go from a company that is known as the place you order food to a company that people turn to for any and all goods. DoorDash is growing rapidly and changing constantly, which gives our team members the opportunity to share their unique perspectives, solve new challenges, and own their careers. We're committed to supporting employees’ happiness, healthiness, and overall well-being by providing comprehensive benefits and perks including premium healthcare, wellness expense reimbursement, paid parental leave and more. Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion We’re committed to growing and empowering a more inclusive community within our company, industry, and cities. That’s why we hire and cultivate diverse teams of people from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe that true innovation happens when everyone has room at the table and the tools, resources, and opportunity to excel. Statement of Non-Discrimination: In keeping with our beliefs and goals, no employee or applicant will face discrimination or harassment based on: race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, gender, marital/domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability status, or veteran status. Above and beyond discrimination and harassment based on “protected categories,” we also strive to prevent other subtler forms of