Hiring: Director of ML Engineering - Conversation Product Area Company: Spotify Location: New York, NY Job Posted Time: 2026-09-02 17:56:38 Employment Type: Full-time Target Skills & Keywords: ML Engineering, Agentic AI, LLM Orchestration, Evaluation Infrastructure, Search & Retrieval Systems, Speech/Voice ML, Platform Consolidation, Engineering Leadership, Technical Strategy Experience: - Proven experience running large engineering organizations through platform consolidations, migrations, or evolutions - Experience managing managers, not just individual contributors - Track record of building strong but nimble teams, including restructuring, shifting team resourcing, and adjusting to fast-changing priorities without losing delivery momentum - Experience with at least two of: LLM-based agent systems and orchestration, evaluation/eval-infrastructure design (including automated judges and regression suites), large-scale retrieval or search systems, or speech/voice ML systems and production voice infrastructure - Deeply technical background — able to evaluate architecture proposals, hold their own with senior ICs, and make tough tiebreaking and tradeoff calls Required Skills: - Engineering execution and technical direction for large-scale production systems, applied ML research, and shared infrastructure - Architectural decision-making for agent runtimes, evaluation systems, and voice/speech stacks - Technical strategy ownership, including build vs. buy decisions and platform investment planning - Defining and enforcing engineering quality standards, including code review discipline and test coverage for AI-assisted development - Driving migration of agentic infrastructure onto shared platforms while balancing speed against product roadmaps - Building evaluation discipline: feature-specific judges, datasets, and eval-driven product decisions - Cross-functional partnership with product leadership in a paired product/engineering model - Representation of engineering POV in company-wide architecture and steering conversations Qualifications: - Comfortable co-leading a Product Area in a paired product/engineering leadership model - Able to manage a team of ~70 engineers through a layer of Senior Engineering Managers and Staff/Principal engineers - Skilled at developing and holding accountable an engineering management layer across roughly 9 teams - Experience partnering with senior architects, product leadership in consumer AI, and cross-functional partners - Full member of broader leadership group, co-developing operating models across capacity management, prioritization, and engineering culture - Located within North America or EMEA, in a time zone enabling regular overlap with Eastern North America and Central European time zones Compensation: - United States base range: $281,196 – $401,709 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 Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don’t miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!