Machine Learning Engineer - Music Search Engine Internship (m/f/d)

LIVE THE MUSIC WITH US

From a pioneer tech start-up created in 2007, Deezer has become one of the first French unicorns and the second largest independent music streaming platform in the world.

At eighteen years old, we’re only just coming of age. Now listed on #EuroNext, Deezer is a rapidly-growing, cutting-edge player in the music streaming market. If you want an environment where you can make your voice heard and be at the forefront of music and tech, look no further!

We believe music is all about embracing the things that make us different. 

Deezer is a vibrant community that celebrates uniqueness, diversity and individuality, and thrives on collaboration.

Our international and passionate teams pride themselves on being at the forefront of the music experience, going beyond streaming and helping the world to Live the Music. We’re constantly evolving alongside our customers, partners, artists and employees — striving to make Deezer the most personal and innovative streaming service in the world.

Ready for an electrifying journey? Apply now and do your part in bringing extraordinary music experiences to people’s lives!

Job Description

On a music streaming platform, the search engine plays a central role in helping users access and discover content. While many users search with a clear intent—such as playing a specific song or artist—others use search in a more exploratory way, looking for new or personalized content through open-ended queries like “chill indie vibes” or “road trip songs from the 2000s.”

Traditional search engines, which rely on lexical or semantic matching, often struggle with this kind of exploratory intent. Recommender systems can help but are not always designed to handle complex, free-form queries. This is where Large Language Models (LLMs) and agentic technologies come in: they can interpret nuanced user intent and decide how to best retrieve relevant content by dynamically combining search, recommendation, and other retrieval strategies.

The internship has a start date in October and the goal is to explore how these agentic approaches—powered by LLMs—can be applied to improve exploratory search on a music platform. You will help design and prototype an intelligent system that understands user queries and routes them to the most appropriate back-end services (e.g., search index, recommender, curated playlists).

What you’ll work on

• Investigate and evaluate recent research on agent-based and LLM-powered search systems

• Analyze the specific needs of a music-focused search engine, which differs from general-purpose search

• Design and implement a prototype that interprets complex user queries and delivers personalized music results

• Work with real-world usage data from the Deezer platform

• Optionally experiment with fine-tuning or prompt-engineering LLMs for better performance

• Contribute to system evaluation and discuss the path toward scaling and production deployment

Qualifications

Who we’re looking for

• Master’s student in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field

• Solid understanding of natural language processing and machine learning and good coding skills in Python

• Familiarity with LLMs (e.g., Transformers, OpenAI models) and retrieval techniques (e.g., Elasticsearch, FAISS) is a strong plus

• Knowledge of cloud environments (e.g., AWS, GCP) is a plus

• Interest in user-centric search and recommendation systems

• Curiosity, autonomy, and a hands-on approach to prototyping and experimentation

If you don’t meet 100% of the

qualifications

Additional Information

At Deezer, you can be your true self as we believe that #everyvoicematters. We strive to build an inclusive culture and foster a diverse environment. Because we care and want to ensure each employee feels welcome and safe at work, we continuously focus on fighting biases and helping diverse teams work well together through multiple learning opportunities, e-learnings and workshops right from the onboarding :

• Regular Diversity & Inclusion internal and external talks

• Dedicated employee work streams on Gender equity, Ethnicity & Culture, Disability and LGBTQ+

• Multiple e-learnings and mandatory training sessions for all managers

• English and French courses for all, so that everyone can connect and feel included

Beyond benefits like transportation, we offer you extra perks like:

• A Deezer premium family account for free

• Access to gym classes

• Join over 70 Deezer Communities to connect beyond your day-to-day work, share passions, learn from each other and #Belong

• Deezer parties several times a year and drinks every thursday

• Allowance for sports, travelling and culture

• Meal vouchers

• Mental health and well-being support from Moka.Care 

• Great offices always located in dynamic and attractive districts, whether in Paris, London or Sao Paulo!

• Hybrid remote work policy

If you want to learn more about life and culture at Deezer, please visit our Welcome to the Jungle page here !