Principal, Machine Learning Engineer (L5)

Twilio Inc.; Indianapolis (IN); Remote; USD 36,000 - 57,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Generous time off

Ample parental and wellness leave

Healthcare

Retirement savings program

Job summary

Twilio Inc. is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to join the Customer Memory Team. You will shape core AI features, work on foundational capabilities, and connect research ideas to production experimentation in a remote setting.

Your work will focus on contextual intelligence, customer history, and personalized outreach strategies. You will tackle 0-to-1 challenges, translate ambiguous starting points into rigorous experiments, and explore cutting-edge approaches like LLM

Qualifications

• 10+ years of applied ML/AI experience, owning technically ambitious systems end to end.
• Comfort operating in a 0-to-1 setting with ambiguous requirements and a bias for action.
• Proficiency in Python.
• Experience building cloud-based services with AWS, GCP, or Azure, including high-volume data and real-time inference paths.
• Deep expertise in production-grade ML/AI architecture and deployment, including LLM orchestration and vector stores.

Responsibilities

• Deliver new functionality within a product environment that moves quickly and sees rapid adoption.
• Turn nebulous ideas into well-defined, experiment-driven plans, executed in weeks.
• Perform deep-dive research into state-of-the-art LLM orchestration, retrieval strategies, and data-driven personalization.
• Build machine learning systems that hold up at large scale.
• Continuously learn and adapt in a fast-paced environment.
• Proactively adopt and integrate the latest AI development stacks to reduce boilerplate and focus on core differentiation.

Skills

ML/AI engineering

Python

LLM orchestration

Vector stores

Transformer models

Cloud platforms

Production systems

Mentorship

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Twilio is hiring a Principal Machine Learning Engineer for its Customer Memory Team, focused on building foundational AI and ML capabilities that support intelligent engagement. This remote role is designed for engineers who want to connect research ideas to production experimentation, enabling contextual intelligence by identifying customers, understanding their history, and selecting the best way to reach them.

In this position, you will help shape core functionality in a fast-moving product with rapid adoption. You will translate ambiguous starting points into rigorous experiments that can be executed within weeks, while also deep‑diving into modern approaches such as LLM orchestration, retrieval strategies, and data‑driven personalization. You will also ensure the ML systems you build can perform reliably at Twilio scale.

What you’ll do

• Deliver new functionality within a product environment that moves quickly and sees rapid adoption.
• Turn nebulous ideas into well-defined, experiment-driven plans, executed in weeks.
• Perform deep‑dive research into state-of-the-art LLM orchestration, retrieval strategies, and data‑driven personalization.
• Build machine learning systems that hold up at large scale.
• Continuously learn and adapt in a fast‑paced, high‑delivery environment.
• Proactively adopt and integrate the latest AI development stacks to reduce boilerplate and focus on core differentiation.

What you bring

• 10+ years of applied ML/AI experience, with a record of owning technically ambitious systems end to end.
• Comfort operating in a 0-to-1 setting with ambiguous requirements and a strong bias for action.
• Proficiency in Python.
• Experience building cloud‑based services on AWS, GCP, or Azure, including high‑volume data, streaming or real‑time inference paths, and varied data stores.
• Deep expertise in production‑grade ML/AI architecture, deployment, and systems, including LLM orchestration, embedding models, and vector stores.
• Strong fundamentals in statistical machine learning, transformer models, and LLMs.
• Ability to raise the technical bar through mentorship, design review, and engineering standards without formal management authority.
• Experience building cloud services using AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Strong communication skills and a track record as an effective collaborator.
• Experience building autonomous agents that support multi‑turn conversations and long‑term context or consistency.
• Background in predictive modeling on user behavior, including experiment design and the causal or counterfactual methods needed when randomization is partial.
• Prior experience working with a globally distributed team.

Location and travel

This role is remote, based in India (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana State, Maharashtra, and New Delhi). Travel may be required occasionally for in‑person project or team meetings.

Benefits

• Competitive pay
• Generous time off
• Ample parental and wellness leave
• Healthcare
• Retirement savings program

How Twilio works in hiring

• Twilio uses Artificial Intelligence to help make the hiring process more efficient.
• Every hiring decision is made by real Twilions.
• While remote‑first, you may be asked to report in person occasionally for team gatherings, functional off‑sites, or customer meetings.