Senior Machine Learning Platform/Ops Engineer

About the role

This role drives the productionization of machine learning systems with high reliability, performance, and observability across Preply's global learning platform. The hire owns the end-to-end ML lifecycle, from data ingestion and feature engineering to model training, deployment, and monitoring in production environments. They enable AI scientists and backend engineers to build fast, secure, and reproducible model development workflows by designing scalable infrastructure on GCP and Kubernetes. You will collaborate closely with ML Scientists, Data Engineers, and Backend teams to define robust observability, alerting, and automation for model drift, data quality, and feature coverage. This position is critical for supporting the autonomous, AI-augmented development approach that Preply is scaling across engineering. You will ensure that LLM-based features such as retrieval pipelines, prompt evaluation, and model serving are explored and productionized reliably.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Build and maintain ML pipelines for training, evaluation, and deployment using tools like Databricks, MLFlow, Airflow, DBT, Sagemaker, Tecton.
• Support AI scientists in creating reproducible, containerized model training environments that are on-demand and scheduled, while managing compute at scale such as spot and GPU autoscaling.
• Define and implement observability and alerting for ML systems, including model drift, data quality, and feature coverage.
• Design and scale data ingestion and feature transformation flows using batch technologies like Spark and BigQuery and streaming platforms such as Kafka or equivalent.
• Contribute to internal Python libraries and platform tooling that accelerate experimentation and deployment for all model teams.
• Ensure ML services are modular, testable, and monitored from day one with robust logging and tracing.
• Exploration and productionization of LLM-based features, including retrieval pipelines, prompt evaluation, and model serving.
• Partner with data and backend engineers to align data schemas, feature stores, and API contracts for seamless integration.
• Implement CI/CD workflows for ML models that enforce testing, validation, and safe promotion across staging and production.
• Mentor peers on reliability, testing, and delivery practices to elevate the standard of production ML systems.

Requirements

• Proven experience designing and deploying ML systems in production with at least 5 years in relevant roles.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL, and strong skills in orchestration tools such as Airflow, Kubeflow, or Dagster.
• Hands-on experience with modern cloud platforms, preferably GCP or AWS, and with Kubernetes for container orchestration.
• Deep understanding of ML model lifecycles, including training, validation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Strong DevOps practices, including Git, Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, logging, observability, and containerization using Docker and Kubernetes.
• Ability to work independently with ML Scientists and mentor peers in reliability, testing, and delivery, always driven by product impact.
• Exposure to LLM serving, vector databases, or GenAI-powered product flows is required.
• Deep, hands-on expertise in AI tools, especially within agentic AI software development lifecycle (SDLC).

Practical notes

• Hours: Full-time.

Why you'll love it at Preply

• An open, collaborative, dynamic and diverse culture;
• A generous monthly allowance for lessons on Preply.com, a Learning & Development budget, and dedicated time off for your self-development;
• A competitive financial package with equity, leave allowance, and health insurance;
• Access to free mental health support platforms;
• The opportunity to unlock the potential of learners and tutors through language learning and teaching in 175 countries (and counting);
• Work with cutting-edge AI tools in an environment that champions human-led, AI-enhanced learning;
• Direct impact at a unicorn-scale company that is shaping the future of education globally;
• Freedom to experiment and build with top-tier tools adopted across the engineering organization;
• A mission-driven role where your work empowers millions of learners and tutors worldwide.

Our principles

• Care to change the world
• We are passionate about our work and care deeply about its impact to be life changing.
• We do it for learners
• For both Preply and tutors, learners are why we do what we do. Every day we focus on empowering tutors to deliver an exceptional learning experience.
• Keep perfecting
• To create an outstanding customer experience, we focus on simplicity, smoothness, and enjoyment, continually perfecting it as every detail matters.
• Now is the time
• In a fast-paced world, it matters how quickly we act. Now is the time to make great things happen.
• Disciplined execution
• What makes us disciplined is the excellence in our execution. We set clear goals, focus on what matters, and utilize our resources efficiently.
• Dive deep
• We leverage business acumen and curiosity to investigate disparities between numbers and stories, unlocking meaningful insights to guide our decisions.
• Growth mindset
• We proactively seek growth opportunities and believe today