Spotify

Director, Machine Learning Engineering - Surfaces Foundation

Spotify  •  London, GB (Onsite)  •  1 month ago
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Job Description

Spotify’s Surfaces Foundation team builds the systems that power how personalized recommendations show up for hundreds of millions of listeners. From targeting and configuration to serving and evaluation, this team sits at the intersection of machine learning infrastructure and product experience. You’ll lead a group shaping how AI-driven recommendations evolve across every Spotify surface, helping teams move faster while keeping a strong, shared foundation.

What You'll Do

  • 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
  • Who You Are

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

  • This role is based in London
  • We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home.
  • Spotify

    About Spotify

    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 opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.

    Spotify transformed music listening forever when it launched in Sweden in 2008. Discover, manage and share over 70m tracks for free, or upgrade to Spotify Premium to access exclusive features including offline mode, improved sound quality, and an ad-free music listening experience.

    Today, Spotify is the most popular global audio streaming service with 365m users, including 165m subscribers across 178 markets. We are the largest driver of revenue to the music business today.

    Industry
    Arts & Entertainment
    Company Size
    10,000+ employees
    Headquarters
    Stockholm, SE
    Year Founded
    2006
    Social Media