Senior Principal Machine Learning Engineer - Recommendations

Soundcloud71; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 280,000 - 325,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401k

Equity plan

Professional development allowance

Creativity & Wellness benefit

PTO 35 days annual

Parental leave 16 weeks

Free lunches

Job summary

SoundCloud is seeking a Senior Principal Engineer to architect the next era of Musical Intelligence. You will lead ML systems for recommendation, personalization, and search at scale, shaping the technical North Star and delivering data-driven products.

You will mentor ML Engineers and Scientists, partner with the CTO, and shape agentic workflows and AI-native engineering to accelerate delivery. This role reports to the CTO and interacts with Music Intelligence, Content, and Recommendations

Qualifications

• 10+ years of ML engineering experience, plus 3+ years in search or recommendations for internet-scale services.
• Proven track record defining technical strategy and driving execution for large-scale ML systems.
• Experience leading and scaling teams of ML Engineers and Scientists.
• Hands-on familiarity with PyTorch and TensorFlow on cloud platforms.
• Strong software engineering foundations and data-driven product mindset.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical strategy and execution for SoundCloud ML systems (recommendation, ranking, personalization).
• Drive exploration of advanced modeling techniques including LLMs and multi-modal embeddings.
• Define the ML tech direction, feature stores, pipelines, and model versioning at scale.
• Own short- and long-term ML objectives and measure business impact.
• Mentor and grow ML Engineers and Scientists.
• Partner with CTO to advance an ML Everywhere strategy across products.
• Stay current with industry trends and apply them to SoundCloud.

Skills

ML engineering

Large-scale systems

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Data processing

Cloud platforms

Model deployment

Leadership

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

MLflow

Job description

SoundCloud empowers artists, tastemakers and fans to connect and share through music. Founded in 2007, SoundCloud is a creator-first platform helping artists build and grow their careers by providing them with the most advanced tools, services, and resources.

With over 4x the music catalog of every other major streaming platform, spanning 40+ million artists across 190+ countries, SoundCloud is where emerging artists find their sound, hidden gems are discovered, and music culture is shaped in real time.

SoundCloud is seeking a Machine Learning leader to architect the next era of Musical Intelligence at SoundCloud. As a Senior Principal Engineer, you will combine deep technical expertise with strategic vision and people leadership to drive the development of large-scale recommendation, personalization, and search systems. The mission is clear: architect systems to extract high-fidelity insights from user interactions with the world’s largest audio dataset to connect artists and fans through music. You will define the technical North Star for ML across engineering, delivering impactful data-driven products while leading and growing a high-performing team of Engineers and Scientists. This role reports directly to the Chief Technology Officer and will work in lockstep with the Music Intelligence, Content, and Recommendations teams. You will also be part of a small group leading the charge in architecting the agentic workflows and LLM-assisted systems that will allow us to ship Musical Intelligence at 10x the speed of traditional teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the technical strategy and execution for SoundCloud’s ML systems (e.g., recommendation, ranking, personalization), including model development, deployment, and scaling
• Lead the exploration of advanced modeling techniques including Deep Neural Networks, LLMs, large recommender systems, multi-modal embeddings and transformer-based architectures to create unique and impactful listening experiences
• Define and drive the overall technical direction for ML in SoundCloud including model architecture, feature engineering, training and serving infrastructure at scale, feature stores, pipeline orchestration, and model registry and versioning all aimed at accelerating our ability to bring ML-powered features to market
• Own short- and long-term objectives, ensuring ML investments deliver measurable user and business impact
• Lead, mentor, and grow ML Engineers and Scientists across SoundCloud
• Be a strategic partner to the CTO in bringing an “ML Everywhere” strategy to all surfaces in the product (both Creator and Fan), and helping to lead the charge on AI-native engineering
• Stay current with industry trends and advancements in machine learning, identifying opportunities to apply them at SoundCloud
• Lead the leveraging of agentic workflows and AI-assisted engineering as a force multiplier to work at 10x the speed of traditional methods

Experience and Background:

• 10+ years of experience in ML engineering, plus 3+ years in search or recommendations in an internet scale service with the reach of tens of millions of daily active users. Experience in a music streaming environment is a bonus
• Proven track record of defining technical strategy and driving execution for large-scale ML systems, particularly in recommendation, personalization, or search
• Experience setting technical roadmaps, influencing cross-functional priorities, and balancing business, product, and engineering trade-offs at an organizational level
• Experience leading and scaling teams of ML Engineers and Scientists, including hiring, mentoring, and developing high-performing talent
• Deep expertise in delivering data-driven products and ML solutions at scale on cloud-based platforms, with strong understanding of infrastructure and lifecycle management
• Hands-on familiarity with modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) and data processing pipelines, combined with strong software engineering foundations
• Thought leadership in ML and data science, with a track record of driving technical innovation and applying emerging industry trends
• Exceptional communication, strategic influence, and cross-functional leadership skills across senior stakeholders and global teams

The salary range for this role is $280,000 - $325,000 annually. The final salary offered will be determined based on relative experience, skills, internal equity, and location. We also offer a generous total rewards program - read more about additional benefits and perks below!

About us:

• We are a multinational company with offices in the US (New York and Los Angeles), Germany (Berlin), and the UK (London)
• We provide a flexible work culture that offers the opportunity to collaborate and connect in person at our offices as well as accommodating work from home
• We are deeply committed to ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of our organization and fostering a community where everyone’s voice, perspective and experience is respected and heard
• We believe a strong team is made by investing in employees through mentorship, workshops and enrichment opportunities

Benefits:

• Comprehensive health benefits including medical, dental, and vision plans, as well as mental health resources
• Robust 401k program
• Employee Equity Plan
• Generous professional development allowance
• Interested in a gym membership, photography course or book? We have a Creativity and Wellness benefit!
• Flexible vacation and public holiday policy where you can take up to 35 days of PTO annually
• 16 paid weeks for all parents (birthing and non-birthing), regardless of gender, to welcome newborns, adopted and foster children
• Various snacks, goodies, and 2 free lunches weekly when at the office

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at SoundCloud

SoundCloud is for everyone.Diversity and open expression are fundamental to our organization; they help us lead what’s next in music byunderstanding and empowering our creators and fans, no matter their identity. We acknowledge the challenges in the music industry, and strive toinfluence an inclusive culture where everyone can contribute respectfully and thrive, especially the historically marginalized communities that many of our creators, fans and SoundClouders identify with. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment at SoundCloud for everyone, regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, migration background, national origin, age, disability status, or care-giver status.

At SoundCloud you can find your community or elevate your allyship by joining a Diversity Resource Group. Diversity Resource Groups are employee-organized groups focused on supporting and promoting the interests of a particular underrepresented community in order to build a more inclusive culture at SoundCloud. Anyone can join, whether you share the identity or strive to be an ally.