Principal ML Engineer

Lilt is the leading AI solution for enterprise translations. Our stack made up of our Contextual AI Engine, Connector APIs, and Human Adaptive Feedback enable global organizations to adopt a true AI translation strategy, focusing on business outcomes instead of outputs. With Lilt, innovative, category-defining organizations like Intel, ASICS, WalkMe, and Canva are using AI technology to deliver multilingual, digital customer experiences at scale.

As a result, Lilt’s AI technology foundation is similar to ChatGPT and Google Translate, before our patented Contextual AI Engine, connector-first approach, and human-adapted feedback.

Our team is located globally in San Francisco, Indianapolis, London, and Berlin with hubs located in Washington D.C., New York City, and Boston. You can learn more about us and what it’s like to work here on our Careers page!

Authorization to work in Germany or the EU is a precondition of employment.

The Research Team at Lilt

Lilt was founded by researchers from Stanford and Google, and the founding team consists of four computational linguists. We encourage publication and the free exchange of ideas. Current research interests are machine translation, domain adaptation techniques, and computational morphology. We have a strong preference for researchers who are also strong engineers and enjoy putting their ideas into practice.

What you’ll do

We encourage publication and the free exchange of ideas. Current research interests are machine translation, domain adaptation techniques, and computational morphology. We have a strong preference for researchers who are also strong engineers and enjoy putting their ideas into practice.

This position is based out of our Berlin office and will be expected to work in the office in a hybrid capacity.

Key Responsibilities:

• Identify and facilitate delivery of multi-team projects on clear timelines.

• Increase the team’s effectiveness by hiring great engineers and onboarding them efficiently.

• Identify and proactively resolve personnel crises before they occur.

• Give constructive, effective technical and organizational feedback on work product and communication.

• Work with Product to prioritize infrastructure improvements and technical debt against business requirements. 

• Work with the team to identify areas of strategic technical debt and arrive at cost/benefit analyses for their elimination. 

• Create and maintain a motivating and collaborative work environment.

Skills and Experience:

• Masters (Ph.D. preferred) in Computer Science, Statistics, or Computational Math (or equivalent industry experience in Computer Science or a related technical discipline). 

• 2+ years as an engineering manager or team lead.

• 2+ years experience working on a Machine Learning product.

• Established research experience and publication record in machine learning, machine translation, human-computer interaction, or natural language processing. 

• Enthusiasm for research projects that lead directly to product impact. 

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

• Passion to devise solutions that require a focus on systems thinking.

• Demonstrated ability to gather, organize, and synthesize significant and diverse information.

• Strong desire to master the product that you create, and to understand the customer that uses the product.

• Ability to manage and execute projects through cross-functional collaboration and organizational influence.

• Experience collaborating with other researchers on large-scale machine learning systems.

Qualifications

• Masters (Ph.D. preferred) in Computer Science, Statistics, or Computational Math

• Established research experience and publication record in machine learning, machine translation, human-computer interaction, or natural language processing. 

• Enthusiasm for research projects that lead directly to product impact. 

• Experience collaborating with other researchers on large-scale machine learning systems.

Our Story

Our founders, Spence and John met at Google working on Google Translate.  As researchers at Stanford and Berkeley, they both worked on language technology to make information accessible to everyone. They were amazed to learn that Google Translate wasn’t used for enterprise products and services inside the company and left to start a new company to address this need – Lilt. 

At its core, Lilt has always been a machine learning company since its incorporation on March 6, 2015. At the time, machine translation didn’t meet the quality standard for enterprise translations, so Lilt assembled a cutting-edge research team tasked with closing that gap. While meeting customer demand for translation services, Lilt has prioritized investments in Large Language Models, believing that this foundation was imperative to the future of enterprise translation.

Benefits: 

• Compensation: Competitive salary, meaningful equity, and time off plus company holidays. 

• Monthly lifestyle benefit stipend via the Fringe platform to allow employees to customize benefits to their lifestyle.

Lilt is an equal opportunity employer. We extend equal opportunity to all individuals without regard to an individual’s race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic characteristics, veteran or marital status, pregnancy, or any other classification protected by applicable local, state or federal laws. We are committed to the principles of fair employment and the elimination of all discriminatory practices.