Director, Machine Learning Engineering – Surfaces Foundation

Spotify

Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer focusing on personalized recommendations at Spotify. Lead engineering teams and shape the technical vision for machine learning systems.

Posted 4/28/2026full-timeRemote • New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $264,641 - $378,058 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Lead and support engineering managers and their teams building platform systems for personalized recommendations across Spotify
Set and evolve the technical vision for foundational capabilities, including targeting, serving, evaluation, and agent-driven systems
Make thoughtful decisions about what should become platform capabilities, ensuring teams can move quickly without unnecessary complexity
Guide incremental platform evolution, enabling continuous delivery rather than large, disruptive rewrites
Partner closely with product, data science, and engineering leaders to align priorities across multiple squads
Stay close to the technology when needed, contributing to architecture decisions and resolving complex production challenges
Encourage adoption of AI-assisted development tools and shape how teams use them effectively in day-to-day work
Hire, develop, and grow engineering leaders and individual contributors, building a strong and inclusive team culture

Requirements

What you’ll need

experience building and operating machine learning systems at scale in consumer-facing products
worked on recommendation systems, ranking, or content delivery platforms and understand end-to-end ML workflows
strong platform thinking, with the ability to decide when to build shared capabilities and when to keep solutions closer to product teams
comfortable working with modern AI tools and understand how they influence software development practices
led teams through change, supporting adoption of new technologies or ways of working
collaborate effectively across disciplines and help create alignment across teams with different priorities
care about building inclusive, supportive team environments and invest in the growth of others
comfortable navigating ambiguity and making decisions that balance short-term needs with long-term impact

Benefits

Comp & perks

health insurance
six month paid parental leave
401(k) retirement plan
monthly meal allowance
23 paid days off
13 paid flexible holidays
paid sick leave

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

machine learning systemsrecommendation systemsrankingcontent delivery platformsend-to-end ML workflowsAI-assisted development toolsarchitecture decisionscontinuous deliveryplatform capabilitiessoftware development practices

Soft Skills

leadershipcollaborationinclusive team culturesupporting growth of othersnavigating ambiguitydecision makingalignment across teamsplatform thinkingadapting to changecommunication