Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Content Understanding & Moderation

Unity Ads serves billions of ad requests across hundreds of thousands of mobile games. Every one of those requests involves content on both sides: an ad creative we are about to show, and a game we are about to show it for.

Understanding that content — what is in it, who it is appropriate for, and whether it belongs on the network at all — underpins both the safety of the marketplace and its relevance. The Content Understanding and Moderation charter covers representation, turning creatives and games into signals our models can use, and enforcement, detecting and acting on content that violates policy, regulation, or advertiser and publisher expectations. These are deliberately a single charter: the same multimodal understanding that improves relevance is what makes moderation possible at scale.

The Role

We are seeking a staff machine learning engineer to define how Unity understands and moderates the content flowing through its ad network. You will work closely with a world-class modeling team to power the recommendation for billions of users, while keeping them safe from bad content.

What You’ll Do

• Define the multimodal content representation strategy across video, image, playable, audio, and text, so that one set of foundations serves both relevance and moderation rather than two divergent stacks

• Partner with product, engineering, science teams to translate regulatory and contractual obligations into objectives an ML system can be measured against

• Define what good looks like where labels are scarce, noisy, and genuinely contested, and build the evaluation and labeling infrastructure that makes it measurable

• Build the shared foundations other teams depend on, including content embeddings, game level features, evaluation harnesses, and labeling pipelines

• Lead architectural direction across teams, raise the design and review bar, and mentor senior and mid-level engineers working in the area

What We’re Looking For

• Deep experience in multimodal machine learning combining vision and language, with video experience especially relevant

• Extensive Experience owning a trust and safety, content moderation, brand safety, or policy enforcement system in production, where being wrong in either direction carried real consequences

• Experience operating where labels are scarce, ambiguous, or disputed, and where the definition of a violation shifts over time

• Experience adapting foundation models for production use, including fine-tuning, distillation, and optimization for latency and cost

• Strong programming skills in Python and experience running production ML systems on a serving path, with fluency in latency, throughput, and cost tradeoffs

• Experience reviewing and remaining accountable for production code, including code produced with AI assistance

• Proven ability to lead technical direction and influence architectural decisions across teams without formal authority

You might also have (optional)

• Familiarity with regulatory and policy regimes affecting advertising content, such as DSA, child-directed treatment, and regional advertising standards

• Strong systems thinking, with the ability to reason about performance, scalability, reliability, and cost tradeoffs in distributed systems

This range reflects the anticipated base salary for this position. Beyond base salary, this role may be eligible for equity awards and participation in our company incentive plans (such as annual discretionary bonuses or sales commissions). The final offer amount will depend on several factors, including geographic location and the candidate’s relevant experience, professional background, and skill set.

Benefits

At Unity, we want our team members to thrive. We offer a wide range of benefits designed to support well-being and work-life balance.

Please note: Benefits eligibility, specific offerings, and coverage vary based on the country and employment status.

While specific benefits vary, here are some of the ways we strive to take care of our eligible team members globally: Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance | Commute subsidy | Employee stock ownership | Competitive retirement/pension plans | Generous vacation and personal days | Support for new parents through leave and family-care programs | Office food snacks | Mental Health and Wellbeing programs and support | Employee Resource Groups | Global Employee Assistance Program | Training and development programs | Volunteering and donation matching program

Life at Unity

Unity [NYSE: U] is the world’s leading game engine, powering play for more than 3 billion consumers each month. The top mobile games in the world, the most played PC indie titles, the most innovative console games, and virtually all of the top XR and Web Games are developed, deployed, and grown in Unity. Unity also enables teams across industries like automotive, manufacturing, and healthcare to design, simulate, and collaborate in 3D — closing the gap between ideas and reality. For more information, please visit .

Unity is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. Therefore, we provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law. If you have a disability that means there are preparations or accommodations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please fill out this form to let us know.

This position requires the incumbent to have a sufficient knowledge of English to have professional verbal and written exchanges in this language since the performance of the duties related to this position requires frequent and regular communication with colleagues and partners located worldwide and whose common language is English.

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