Senior Applied ML Engineer

Company: First American
Location: Santa Ana
Posted on: April 1, 2026

Job Description:

Who We Are Join a team that puts its People First! Since 1889, First American (NYSE: FAF) has held an unwavering belief in its people. They are passionate about what they do, and we are equally passionate about fostering an environment where all feel welcome, supported, and empowered to be innovative and reach their full potential. Our inclusive, people-first culture has earned our company numerous accolades, including being named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list for ten consecutive years. We have also earned awards as a best place to work for women, diversity and LGBTQ employees, and have been included on more than 50 regional best places to work lists. First American will always strive to be a great place to work, for all. For more information, please visit www.careers.firstam.com. What We Do Be part of a transformative team that is shaping the way First American builds and delivers world-class technology products that fuel the real estate industry. You'll be responsible for designing, building, and deploying applied machine learning solutions—including deep learning transformer-based models for Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision, as well as traditional shallow learning models. The role focuses on developing scalable ML systems that deliver measurable business outcomes and drive value across the organization. WHAT YOU'LL DO: Design, build, fine-tune, and deploy state-of-the-art machine learning and large language models at scale, supporting millions of daily predictions with a strong focus on accuracy, latency, compute efficiency, and cost optimization. Develop end-to-end ML and LLM pipelines, covering data ingestion, scripting, automated workflows for OCR, model training, evaluation, and post-processing in production environments. Build and operationalize LLM fine-tuning pipelines, applying a range of model adaptation techniques including full fine-tuning, LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation), prompt-based methods, and Direct Preference Optimization (DPO). Design and experiment with novel LLM architectures, balancing model size, computational efficiency, memory constraints, and deployment requirements. Optimize LLMs for production deployment through model quantization, compression, and teacher–student architectures, enabling efficient inference in resource-constrained environments. Architect and deploy Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, leveraging vector databases, embedding services, semantic search, document chunking, indexing, and retrieval mechanisms using frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, and commercial RAG platforms within GCP and Databricks. Innovate in ML operations and evaluation, including automated ground-truth generation, continuous post-evaluation pipelines, and iterative feedback loops to systematically improve model performance over time. Design and implement CI/CD pipelines for machine learning systems, ensuring high availability, reliability, low latency, and rapid iteration from experimentation to production. WHAT YOU’LL BRING 5 years of experience in machine learning engineering, with a proven track record of deploying and operating ML and NLP/LLM systems in production at scale. Strong hands-on experience building full-stack ML systems, from data ingestion and automation to training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring. Deep expertise in LLM fine-tuning and adaptation techniques, including full fine-tuning, LoRA, prompt-based optimization, and preference-based methods such as DPO. Practical experience designing and optimizing LLM architectures, with an emphasis on compute efficiency, memory usage, and real-world deployment constraints. Demonstrated proficiency in model inference optimization, including quantization, compression, and distillation techniques for high-throughput, cost-efficient production systems. Solid understanding and hands-on experience with RAG architectures, vector stores, embeddings, semantic search, chunking strategies, and retrieval workflows integrated with large language models. Experience using modern LLM orchestration and RAG frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, and managed AI platforms within cloud ecosystems like GCP and Databricks. Strong background in ML evaluation and MLOps, including automated evaluation pipelines, CI/CD for ML, and continuous improvement of deployed models. Proficiency in Python and ML/AI development frameworks, with the ability to work in fast-paced, experimental environments and production systems simultaneously. $129,300 - $189,500 This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting. Pay is based on a number of factors which may include job-related knowledge, skills, experience, business requirements and geographic location. Note that the following statements only apply to candidates who will be working from an unincorporated area within Los Angeles County. First American will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws (e.g., the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act). First American intends to conduct a review of an applicant’s criminal history in connection with a conditional offer. First American reasonably believes that a criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following material job duties for this position potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment: handling of confidential, proprietary or trade secret information belonging to First American or its customers, administrating or facilitating financial transactions, and the ability to meet customer-imposed criminal history requirements. What We Offer By choice, we don’t simply accept individuality – we embrace it, we support it, and we thrive on it! Our People First Culture celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s the key to our success. We are proud to foster an authentic and inclusive workplace For All. You are free and encouraged to bring your entire, unique self to work. First American is an equal opportunity employer in every sense of the term. Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.

Keywords: First American, Montebello , Senior Applied ML Engineer, Engineering , Santa Ana, California