Senior Backend Engineer - Machine Learning Platform

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to help us define and build the next generation of model inference within the Machine Learning Platform at Spotify. Our team’s mission is to enable Spotifiers to scale their model inference – real-time, batch, or on-device. We are calculating predictions at the scale of 430M+ monthly active users.
You will advance high-volume, real-time inference and large-scale prediction logging for future training. Working closely with many of the ML teams at Spotify including; Personalization, Music Intelligence and Ads targeting.
More broadly, the ML Platform group advances the business by accelerating development and iteration of ML-powered products. ML allows us to solve problems at scale, growing our impact faster than we grow our resources. Your work will impact the way the world experiences music and podcasts.

What you'll do

• Design such infrastructure whilst paying close attention to correctness, usability, interpretability, experimentation and maintainability.
• Gain a deep understanding of the complete machine learning workflow.
• Become an authority in leveraging existing state-of-the-art tooling into the Spotify ecosystem (Kubernetes, Tensorflow, XGBoost, PyTorch, Google Cloud Platform: DataFlow, Bigtable, PubSub).
• Collaborate cross-product with teams of backend, data and ML engineers, as well as others, in building new product features.
• Determine feasibility of projects through quick prototyping with respect to performance, quality, time and cost using agile methodologies

Who you are

• You have built services and libraries using languages like Java, Scala or Python.
• You have a desire to deepen your exposure to the machine learning domain.
• You have experience or exposure to batch data processing frameworks like Google Cloud Dataflow, Hadoop, Spark, Scalding, or Flink.
• You have experience or curiosity about using Kubernetes for deployment and resource allocation.
• You care about data-driven development, reliability, and responsible experimentation, and agile processes.
• You have led cross-disciplinary work.
• You value team success over personal success.

Where you'll be

• We are a distributed workforce enabling our band members to find a work mode that is best for them!
• Where in the world? For this role, it can be within the Americas region in which we have a work location and is within working hours.
• Working hours? We operate within the Eastern Standard time zone for collaboration and ask that all be located in that time zone.
• Prefer an office to work from home instead? Not a problem! We have plenty of options for your working preferences. Find more information about our Work From Anywhere options here.

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.
Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with a community of more than 381 million users.


This role is not eligible for hire in Colorado, USA.