Staff Engineer - Content Intelligence Infrastructure

Spotify; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Spotify seeks a Staff Engineer for the Content Intelligence Product Area to design and scale foundational data, backend, and ML infrastructure powering content understanding across audio, video, text, and images. You’ll partner with product and engineering leaders to set long‑term technical direction and drive high‑impact initiatives.

You will lead cross‑functional teams, shape architecture decisions, and mentor engineers while delivering cost‑efficient, high‑throughput systems for real‑time

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building and scaling large‑scale backend and infrastructure systems.
• Strong programming in Java, Python, and/or Scala.
• Experience with AI/LLM-enabled workflows at scale.
• Ability to operate in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments and shape technical direction.
• Excellent communication across engineering, product, and leadership.
• Experience leading complex initiatives across teams.
• Exposure to content processing or real-time workloads is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of data, backend and ML infrastructure systems powering Spotify’s content intelligence capabilities.
• Build scalable infrastructure for multimodal content processing across audio, video, text, and image understanding pipelines.
• Partner closely with Product Managers, Engineering Managers, and senior engineers to shape technical strategy across the Content Intelligence Product Area.
• Drive architectural decisions across distributed systems, ML infrastructure, data processing platforms, and platform reliability.
• Improve infrastructure supporting AI and LLM-enabled workflows, including podcast and audiobook transcript processing, metadata enrichment, and content understanding systems.
• Develop reliable and cost‑efficient systems for high‑throughput content processing and real‑time intelligence use cases.
• Collaborate across organizational boundaries to drive alignment, technical quality, and long‑term platform investments.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to raising the engineering bar across the organization.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

Java

Python

Scala

ML infrastructure

LLMs at scale

Mentorship

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Search infrastructure

Recommendation systems

Audio processing

Job description

The Experience team designs Spotify’s consumer experience—end to end, moment to moment, across every screen, platform, and partner integration. Our mission is to make listening feel effortless, personal, and joyful for billions of users around the world. That means turning complexity into clarity across hundreds of touchpoints—from our mobile and desktop apps to the smart speakers, TVs, cars, and integrations where Spotify shows up every day. If it touches a consumer, we shape it. We bring deep insight into human behavior, design, and technology to craft experiences that feel intuitive, expressive, and unmistakably Spotify.

The Content Intelligence Product Area is a core part of Spotify’s Content Platform within the Experience mission. We build systems that create deep, machine-readable understanding of content across audio, video, text, and images before it reaches users. This enables automation, safety, and entirely new product experiences. Our work powers content enrichment, quality analysis, annotation platforms, and scalable intelligence systems that allow teams across Spotify to build without needing direct content understanding expertise.

We’re now looking for a Staff Engineer to help build and scale foundational infrastructure powering content understanding across Spotify. This role sits at the intersection of backend systems, ML infrastructure, distributed data systems, and AI-enabled platform capabilities. You’ll help shape infrastructure strategy across the product area while partnering with senior engineers, product leaders, and cross‑functional teams to execute on long‑term technical investments.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the design and evolution of data, backend and ML infrastructure systems powering Spotify’s content intelligence capabilities

• Build scalable infrastructure for multimodal content processing across audio, video, text, and image understanding pipelines

• Partner closely with Product Managers, Engineering Managers, and senior engineers to shape technical strategy across the Content Intelligence Product Area

• Drive architectural decisions across distributed systems, ML infrastructure, data processing platforms, and platform reliability

• Improve infrastructure supporting AI and LLM-enabled workflows, including podcast and audiobook transcript processing, metadata enrichment, and content understanding systems

• Develop reliable and cost‑efficient systems for high‑throughput content processing and real‑time intelligence use cases

• Collaborate across organizational boundaries to drive alignment, technical quality, and long‑term platform investments

• Mentor engineers and contribute to raising the engineering bar across the organization

Who You Are

• You have extensive experience building and scaling large‑scale backend and infrastructure systems in distributed environments

• You have strong technical judgment and can balance scalability, reliability, cost, and product needs effectively

• You have strong programming experience in Java, Python, and/or Scala

• You understand the challenges of building systems that process high‑volume multimedia or real‑time workloads

• You have worked with systems and products that use AI and LLMs at large scale and can demonstrate direct experience in building such products. You can demonstrate a good understanding of the quality scale and cost trade‑offs of these technologies.

• You are comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments and helping shape technical direction from the ground up

• You communicate effectively across engineering, product, and leadership stakeholders

• You have experience leading complex technical initiatives that span multiple teams or organizational areas

• You care deeply about collaboration, mentorship, and creating alignment across teams

• Exposure to search infrastructure, recommendation systems, or audio processing systems is a strong plus

• Experience working in startup environments or early‑stage product areas where ownership and adaptability are critical is highly valued

Where You’ll Be

• This role is based in London or Stockholm

• 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.

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