Senior Platform Engineer, Machine Learning

Company Overview

Movable Ink accelerates content personalization through data-driven content creation and AI decision-making. Trusted by some of the world's leading brands, the company helps marketers increase revenue, streamline processes, and enhance marketing flexibility. Based in New York City with a workforce nearing 600 employees, Movable Ink operates globally across North America, Central America, Europe, Australia, and Japan.

Role Summary

The AI Systems team manages the core recommendations engine that drives billions of AI-powered marketing actions daily across top global consumer brands. As a Senior Machine Learning Platform Engineer, you will spearhead the modernization of this engine into a scalable distributed architecture. This is a key technical project that balances cutting-edge distributed systems engineering with impactful machine learning applications, directly influencing revenue-generating functionality.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive the redesign and transformation of the core recommendation pipeline to a state-of-the-art distributed system, ensuring continuous delivery of improvements while preserving production reliability.
• Architect, develop, and maintain scalable, fault-resilient backend services enabling large-scale personalization including content selection, send-time optimization, subject line customization, and frequency regulation.
• Diagnose and address system bottlenecks, reliability vulnerabilities, and scaling challenges.
• Partner with ML engineers and product teams to convert business and technical needs into robust, production-ready system designs.
• Take ownership of significant system modules end-to-end, encompassing design, coding, deployment, monitoring, and incident management.
• Promote engineering excellence through rigorous system design, high-quality code, extensive testing, observability, and strong operational practices.
• Guide and mentor team members, fostering a culture centered on technical excellence, accountability, and continuous learning.

Required Qualifications

• At least 5 years of experience in software development emphasizing distributed systems engineering.
• Proven success in building and maintaining large-scale distributed platforms that are concurrently fault-tolerant, highly available, and efficient.
• Mastery of software engineering principles including system design, unit testing, version control, code review, and continuous integration/deployment workflows.
• Proficient in Python programming.
• Experience with distributed data processing frameworks such as Apache Spark, Flink, or Beam; direct experience with Apache Spark is especially valued.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts including consensus protocols, data partitioning, replication techniques, handling back-pressure, ensuring idempotency, and fault tolerance strategies.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP — with GCP being the platform in use.
• Familiarity with modern microservices and distributed technologies, specifically Kubernetes, Kafka, and gRPC.
• Knowledge of Software Development Lifecycle best practices including CI/CD and automated deployments, particularly using Docker, Kubernetes, and GitHub Actions.
• Strong leadership abilities with a track record of collaborative decision-making, architectural advocacy, and mentoring engineers.
• Exceptional analytical and troubleshooting skills capable of quickly diagnosing and resolving issues in live production environments.
• A strong desire for continuous professional growth and adaptation to emerging technologies.

Compensation & Inclusion

The salary range for this position is CAD 143,000 to 200,000 annually, potentially supplemented by bonuses. Competitive medical, financial, and other benefits are also included. Salary offered will reflect the candidate's skills, experience, and knowledge. The company actively encourages applications from women, people of color, and individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, embracing diversity and inclusivity as strengths. All qualified candidates are invited to apply regardless of race, gender identity, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, age, and other protected categories. Movable Ink is committed to being an equal opportunity employer.