Senior Principal AI/ML Architect, Yahoo Mail

ouryahoo; United States; Hybrid; USD 161,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare benefits

401k plan

Education stipends

Job summary

Yahoo is seeking a Senior Principal AI/ML Architect to define and drive the architectural vision for agentic, assistive, and personalization intelligence across Yahoo Mail and related properties.

You will lead arch decisions for mission-critical AI systems, shape platform strategy, and set governance standards at the BU level. This role requires deep AI/ML expertise and a strong record of cross-team influence.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with deep AI/ML expertise.
• Proven track record architecting large-scale AI platforms.
• Strong expertise in distributed ML systems and LLMs/generative AI.
• Experience with personalization and real-time ranking systems.
• Production inference infrastructure and cost-aware design.
• Experience influencing architecture across teams or BU.
• Ability to translate business strategy into technical strategy.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture for mission-critical AI systems across the BU.
• Translate ambiguous opportunities into cohesive AI platform strategy.
• Influence technical direction across squads and set engineering standards.
• Define reference architectures for multi-agent systems and LLM orchestration.
• Establish guardrails, explainability, and responsible AI standards.
• Design human-in-the-loop and autonomy control patterns.
• Define next-gen personalization architecture and benchmarking standards.
• Lead decisions on model serving, hosting strategy, and reusable infra.
• Drive build-vs-buy decisions and cross-team collaboration.
• Champion governance and reproducibility in ML lifecycle.

Skills

Distributed ML

LLMs & GenAI

Personalization & Ranking

Production Inference

Multi-team Influence

Business Strategy Translation

Architectural Leadership

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS or related discipline

Job description

A Little About Us

Yahoo Mail serves over 220M users globally and operates at massive scale—billions of inbound connections and trillions of messages. Our vision is to be the best consumer inbox that helps users run the business of their lives.

The Mail Intelligence AI/ML Platform powers intelligent capabilities across Yahoo Mail and the broader Yahoo ecosystem. We build systems that extract meaning from unstructured content, understand user context and intent, and deeply personalize user journeys at scale.

We are evolving beyond traditional ML into agentic, assistive, and proactive intelligence—systems that don’t just classify or recommend, but reason, act, orchestrate workflows, and assist users autonomously and responsibly.

A Lot About You

We are seeking a Senior Principal AI/ML Architect (IC6) to define and drive the architectural vision for agentic, assistive, and personalization intelligence across Yahoo Mail and adjacent Yahoo properties. As the AI/ML Architect scope spans business-unit level impact, with influence across multiple squads and strategic alignment with business direction. You will define long-term AI strategy, architecture patterns, evaluation standards, and operational excellence for intelligent systems that operate at global scale.

• Lead architecture for mission-critical AI systems across the business unit


• Translate ambiguous business opportunities into cohesive AI platform strategy


• Influence technical direction across multiple squads


• Set engineering and operational standards at the business unit level


• Proactively align design choices with long-term business strategy

What You’ll Drive

Agentic AI Architecture Strategy

• Define reference architectures for:
  
  
  
  • Multi-agent systems
  
  
  • Tool-augmented LLM orchestration
  
  
  • Memory and context frameworks
  
  
  • Retrieval + reasoning hybrid architectures
  
  
  
  


• Establish guardrails, explainability, and responsible AI standards.


• Design human-in-the-loop and autonomy control patterns.

Personalization Platform Evolution

• Define next-gen personalization architecture:
  
  
  
  • Unified user representation
  
  
  • Cross-product intelligence graph
  
  
  • Real-time ranking and recommendation systems
  
  
  
  


• Set metrics frameworks and benchmarking standards for personalization quality.

Inference & ML Platform Modernization

• Lead architectural decisions on:
  
  
  
  • Model serving standardization
  
  
  • LLM hosting strategy (self-hosted vs API)
  
  
  • Cost optimization and latency budgets
  
  
  • Cross-team reusable AI infrastructure
  
  
  
  


• Drive build-vs-buy decisions at business-unit scale .

Governance & Engineering Excellence

• Set engineering standards across BU .


• Define evaluation frameworks for LLM and ML quality.


• Establish reproducibility, experimentation, and ML lifecycle governance.


• Champion tech initiatives to scale quality and communication .

Organizational & External Influence

• Lead cross-functional alignment (Product, Data Science, Infra).


• Mentor principal and senior engineers.


• Represent Yahoo engineering externally via talks, blogs, and technical leadership .


• Shape industry best practices in assistive and agentic AI systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or Master's degree in Computer Science or related discipline; or equivalent experience


• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with deep AI/ML expertise


• Proven track record architecting large-scale AI platforms


• Strong expertise in:
  
  
  
  • Distributed ML systems
  
  
  • LLMs and generative AI
  
  
  • Personalization and ranking systems
  
  
  • Production inference infrastructure
  
  
  
  


• Experience influencing architecture across multiple teams or business units


• Demonstrated ability to translate business strategy into technical strategy

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoo policies; exercising sound judgment; working effectively, safely and inclusively with others; exhibiting trustworthiness and meeting expectations; and safeguarding business operations and brand integrity.

At Yahoo, we offer flexible hybrid work options that our employees love! While most roles don’t require regular office attendance, you may occasionally be asked to attend in-person events or team sessions. You’ll always get notice to make arrangements. Your recruiter will let you know if a specific job requires regular attendance at a Yahoo office or facility. If you have any questions about how this applies to the role, just ask the recruiter!

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category. Yahoo will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law. Yahoo is dedicated to providing an accessible environment for all candidates during the application process and for employees during their employment. If you need accessibility assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, please submit a request via the Accommodation Request Form www.yahooinc.com/careers/contact-us.html or call +1.866.772.3182.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace strengthens Yahoo and deepens our relationships. When you support everyone to be their best selves, they spark discovery, innovation and creativity. Among other efforts, our 11 employee resource groups (ERGs) enhance a culture of belonging with programs, events and fellowship that help educate, support and create a workplace where all feel welcome.

The compensation for this position ranges from $160,965.00 - $349,885.00/yr and will vary depending on factors such as your location, skills and experience. The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of discretionary annual bonus or commissions. Our comprehensive benefits include healthcare, a great 401k, backup childcare, education stipends and much (much) more.