---
title: 'Machine Learning Engineer at Onyx'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-onyx-san-francisco-xa6rpb6f6cnn'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Machine Learning Engineer at Onyx

- **Company:** Onyx
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $150k–$250k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-04-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/onyx/8209d4b3-4206-4583-b379-605caece9ba6

## Job description

## ABOUT THE ROLE

## 💥 YOUR IMPACT

Onyx is a popular open source project with hundreds of thousands of users. The project has over 10K stars and over 3K community members across Slack and Discord (these stats may already be out of date when you read this). You’ll have the opportunity to build in the open and your work may be used by millions of people in the future.

## 💡 ABOUT THE ROLE

Onyx is the knowledge layer on top of LLMs. Help us improve our agent and knowledge retrieval capabilities to push the frontier on unsolved problems like multi-hop QA, needle in haystack, aggregation type RAG, etc. This is an in-person role based in San Francisco, CA.

You’ll be:

- Evaluating and implementing LLM based knowledge graphs, advanced RAG approaches (StructRAG, etc.), LLM agents, advances in NLP, multi-modal transformers, advanced information retrieval algorithms
- Working on users’ experience with the platform through features like learn from feedback, search personalization, SME suggestion, etc.
- Build a semantic and programmatically useful understanding of the organization's priorities, projects, and people as additional signals to the answering capabilities of Onyx
- Own the approach from inception to validation to production code
- Collaborate with Founders and the Head of AI to shape and influence the direction of the product and contribute to the AI/ML engineering strategy

## 🚀 YOU’LL BE SUCCESSFUL IF YOU…

- Have 3+ years of AI/ML engineering experience building real-world applications
- have in-depth experience with PyTorch/Tensorflow, NLP models, and standard ML algorithms
- Are up date with new advances such as open source/proprietary LLMs, RAG and agent-frameworks
- Strong software engineering background and capable of building backend features with web frameworks, ORMs and relational DBs
- Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate with full stack roles

## ⭐ BONUS POINTS

- Familiar with the full stack Typescript/React/NextJS, Python, Postgres
- Interested in writing technical blogs to establish Onyx is leader in the space

## ABOUT THE INTERVIEW

- Non-technical Phone Screen (30 mins)
- ML Interview (45 mins)
- Practical Coding Interview (30 mins)
- Work Trial (3 days in person, fully covered + compensated)

## ABOUT ONYX

Onyx https://www.onyx.app/ is the open source https://github.com/onyx-dot-app/onyx GenAI platform connected to your company's docs, apps, and people. We ingest and sync from all sources of information (Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Confluence, Salesforce, etc.) to provide a centralized place for users to ask about anything. Imagine your most knowledgeable co-workers, all-rolled into one, and available 24/7!

We believe that every modern team will be adopting knowledge enhanced GenAI within the next 5 years and it is our goal to bring this technology to all the teams of the world.

We raised a $10M seed coming out of YCombinator, backed by Khosla Ventures (early/seed backers of OpenAI, Doordash, GitLab, etc.) and First Round Capital (Notion, Square, Roblox, etc.). Our customers include of the best teams in the world like Netflix, Ramp, Applied Intuition and dozens of others. We also have incredible open source users like Roku, Zendesk, L3Harris and more.

## About Onyx

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Onyx provides an open-source, enterprise-grade AI chat platform that connects to a company’s documents, apps, and people to deliver accurate, knowledge-grounded answers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage – raised $10M seed round)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Chris Weaver, Yuhong Sun

## Core Business
- **Primary Industries**: Enterprise AI, Knowledge Management, Generative AI Infrastructure
- **Target Customers**: B2B – mid-market to enterprise teams; also widely used by open‑source community (individuals and SMBs)
- **Mission**: “Give your team superpowers” by making every modern team adopt knowledge‑enhanced GenAI within the next five years.

## Products & Services
- **Onyx Platform (Community & Enterprise Editions)**: A full‑featured AI chat interface that uses hybrid search (BM25 + dense embeddings), agentic RAG, deep research, code execution, web search, and custom agents. It connects to 50+ data sources (Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Confluence, Salesforce, etc.) and supports any LLM provider (self‑hosted or proprietary).  
  *Type*: Open‑source SaaS (MIT license for Community Edition; proprietary features in Enterprise Edition).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding – $10M seed round (led by Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Khosla Ventures (early backers of OpenAI, DoorDash, GitLab), First Round Capital (Notion, Square, Roblox), Y Combinator (Winter 2024 batch)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Team size of 20 (as of mid‑2025)
  - Customers include Netflix, Ramp, Applied Intuition, and dozens of other teams
  - Open‑source users include Roku, Zendesk, L3Harris
  - 1,000+ teams use the platform
  - Benchmarks show 64–76% win rate against other internal enterprise search solutions

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open Source & Transparent**: Full code visibility, self‑hostable on any infrastructure, no vendor lock‑in.
- **Enterprise‑Grade Security**: SOC 2 Type II, GDPR compliance, RBAC, SSO, audit logs, and granular permission controls.
- **Modular & Extensible**: Clean API interfaces, built‑in agent framework, MCP support, and a thriving open‑source community.
- **Best‑in‑Class Retrieval**: Hybrid search with query expansion, reranking, and citation‑backed answers tested on real workplace questions.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue to build the “application layer for LLMs” with advanced agentic capabilities (deep research, custom agents, code interpreter).
- Expand enterprise adoption through self‑hosted and cloud options while maintaining community engagement.
- Grow developer ecosystem by making Onyx the default open‑source GenAI platform for knowledge retrieval.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Early‑stage startup (20 people) with a strong open‑source ethos; values transparency, autonomy, and impact.
- **Remote / Hybrid / Office**: Based in San Francisco; likely hybrid or in‑person preference (typical for YC startups).
- **Engineering Culture**: Engineers work across the full stack (backend, ML, frontend) on a product used by thousands of teams; contributions to open‑source are encouraged.
- **Notable Perks**: Competitive compensation for seed‑stage ($150K–$400K range per YC jobs page), equity, and the chance to shape a product that is rapidly becoming the “ChatGPT for enterprise knowledge”.

## Sources
1. [onyx.app](https://www.onyx.app/)
2. [Y Combinator – Onyx](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/onyx)
3. [Y Combinator – Onyx Jobs](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/onyx/jobs)
4. [LinkedIn – Onyx AI](https://www.linkedin.com/company/onyx-dot-app)
5. [GitHub – onyx-dot-app/onyx](https://github.com/onyx-dot-app/onyx)
6. [Business Insider – Pitch Deck (Seed Round)](https://www.businessinsider.com/this-pitch-deck-landed-ai-agent-startup-onyx-a-10-million-seed-round) (referenced in YC page)

## Other roles at Onyx

- [Technical Lead, Frontend](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-lead-frontend-onyx-san-francisco-11gafjmdk23x) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-account-executive-onyx-san-francisco-5d1g5k7ydczy) — San Francisco, CA
- [Fullstack Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/fullstack-engineer-onyx-san-francisco-1wnr1fqxhnhb) — San Francisco, CA
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-wynd-labs-remote-whe42v314npy)
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-blissway-inc-denver-x6g0dsrp5q6v) — Denver, CO
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-blissway-inc-denver-gy2xqv8xdt4a) — Denver, CO
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-nt-concepts-chantilly-1sxzj9e9jpxf) — Chantilly, VA
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-witness-ai-bay-area-p29j1tnrbe34) — Bay Area
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-faculty-london-79d036wwxsx4) — London, United Kingdom
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-reaktor-helsinki-0nt2f0pa5t2c) — Helsinki, Finland