Head of Data + ML Platform & Engineering Site Lead

In this role, you'll foster a production-focused culture that effectively bridgesthe gap between model development and operational success. Furthermore, you'll be at the forefront of spearheading our ongoing Generative AI investments. The ideal candidate for this position will combine strategic vision with hands-on technical expertise in machine learning and data infrastructure, driving innovation and excellence across our data and ML initiatives. We are building this team with ownership at Bengaluru, India, this leader will help us boot strap the entire site, starting with this team.

What You'll Do:

Strategic Leadership

• Define the vision, strategy and roadmap for the organization’s data and ML platform to align with critical business goals.
• Help design, build, and facilitate adoption of a modern Data+ML platform
• Stay updated on emerging technologies and trends in data platform, ML Ops and AI/ML

Team Management

• Build a team of Data and ML Platform engineers from a small footprint across multiple geographies
• Foster a culture of innovation and strong customer commitment for both internal and external stakeholders

Platform Development

• Oversee the design and implementation of a platform containing data pipelines, feature stores and model deployment frameworks.
• Develop and enhance ML Ops practices to streamline model lifecycle Management from development to production.

Data Governance

• Institute best practices for data security, compliance and quality to ensure safe and secure use of AI/ML models.

Stakeholder engagement

• Partner with product, engineering and data science teams to understand requirements and translate them into platform capabilities.
• Communicate progress and impact to executive leadership and key stakeholders.

Operational Excellence

• Establish SLI/SLO metrics for Observability of the Data and ML Platform along with alerting to ensure a high level of reliability and performance.
• Drive continuous improvement through data-driven insights and operational metrics.

What You'll Need:

• B.S. in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or a related field and 10+ years related experience; or M.S. with 8+ years of experience; or Ph.D with 6+ years of experience.
• 10+ years experience in data engineering, ML platform development, or related fields with at least 5 years in a leadership role.
• Familiarity with typical machine learning algorithms from an engineering perspective; familiarity with supervised / unsupervised approaches: how, why and when labeled data is created and used.
• Knowledge of ML Platform tools like Jupyter Notebooks, NVidia Workbench, MLFlow, Ray, Vertex AI, etc.
• Experience with modern ML Ops platforms such as MLFLow, Kubeflow or SageMaker preferred.Experience in data platform product(s) and frameworks like Apache Spark, Flink or comparable tools in GCP and orchestration technologies (e.g. Kubernetes, Airflow). Experience with Apache Iceberg is a plus.
• Deep understanding of machine learning workflows, including model training, deployment and monitoring.
• Familiarity with data visualization tools and techniques.
• Experience with boot strapping new teams and growing them to make a large impact.
• Experience operating as a site lead within a company will be a bonus.
• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills. Work with stakeholders across multiple teams and synthesize their needs into software interfaces and processes.