Staff Machine Learning Engineer

The Music Mission team at Spotify owns the end-to-end proposition for music creators and the experiences they create for fans. The DISCO Product Area focuses on building promotional tools to help artists reach more fans. As a Staff Machine Learning Engineer, you will help shape the Machine Learning technical strategy for this high-impact area, partnering across engineering, product, data science, research, and design to create tools that help artists grow their audiences while supporting Spotify's core business.

Responsibilities

• Help define and drive the Machine Learning engineering strategy for Discovery Mode and related royalty programs, translating product goals into scalable technical solutions.
• Design, build, evaluate, ship, and refine production Machine Learning systems through hands-on development.
• Provide technical leadership across complex ML initiatives, helping teams make thoughtful architectural and engineering decisions while balancing near- and long-term priorities.
• Collaborate with user research, design, data science, product management, and engineering to build new product capabilities that strengthen connections between artists and fans.
• Prototype new approaches and turn successful ideas into reliable, scalable solutions for Spotify for Artists customers.
• Drive experimentation, optimization, testing, and tooling that improve the quality, reliability, and effectiveness of our Machine Learning systems.
• Partner with engineers and Machine Learning practitioners across Spotify, including Music Tech Research and Personalization, to explore and develop new approaches to music promotion.
• Help grow the technical capabilities of the broader engineering community through mentorship, knowledge sharing, and strong engineering practices.

Requirements

• Deep experience with Machine Learning and a strong understanding of Machine Learning algorithms, modeling approaches, evaluation, and experimentation.
• Hands-on experience designing and implementing production Machine Learning systems at scale using languages such as Python, Java, Scala, or similar.
• Ability to set technical direction for complex ML problems while remaining close to implementation and delivery.
• Care about reliable software, data-informed development, disciplined experimentation, and building systems that perform effectively at scale.
• Enjoy leading technically complex projects from idea through production and working closely with teammates and partners to deliver meaningful outcomes.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity, evaluating trade-offs, and creating clarity on high-impact initiatives.
• Communicate technical decisions and risks clearly and can build alignment with senior technical leaders and cross-functional partners.
• Care about creating products that better serve artists and their teams, and take a collaborative, team-first approach to helping others do their best work.

Location and Benefits

• Flexible work location within the North America region.
• The team operates within the Eastern time zone for collaboration.
• United States base range for this position is $227,495.00 - $324,993 USD, plus equity.
• Benefits include health insurance, six-month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, paid flexible holidays, and paid sick leave.