Staff ML Engineer: Backend Java & Production ML Platform Lead

Wonder Group, INC; United States; Hybrid; USD 209,000 - 217,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

401(k)

Medical/dental/vision plans

Paid time off

Parental leave

Meal discounts

Job summary

Wonder is hiring a Staff Machine Learning Engineer with deep Java backend experience to define how models and services interact and to lead cross-team ML initiatives. You will set standards for load testing, performance, and scalability while mentoring engineers and shaping the platform roadmap.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will work on production ML architectures, including training pipelines and real-time serving, within a hybrid office model in New York.

Qualifications

• PhD or MS/BS in CS, Engineering, Math, Statistics or related field or equivalent experience
• 8+ years of professional software engineering with high-traffic backend in Java
• 5+ years building ML systems in production, incl. 3+ years setting technical direction
• Expert Java and OO design, including Spring Boot, REST or gRPC, JVM tuning
• Track record of setting load testing standards and planning capacity for services
• Experience designing highly available distributed systems with automated testing and monitoring
• Deep production ML architecture experience: training pipelines, batch/real-time serving, feature pipelines
• Strong Python ML development with XGBoost/LightGBM, PyTorch, TensorFlow
• Data engineering with Spark and SQL, streaming/batch pipelines
• Cloud infra on AWS/GCP, Docker, Kubernetes
• Experience with experimentation: A/B tests, guardrail metrics
• Proven technical leadership across ML and software teams
• Clear communication of model behavior to executives

Responsibilities

• Define the standard architecture for how Java services call ML models
• Set load testing and performance standards for all services calling models
• Lead performance work: profiling, JVM tuning, caching, batching, concurrency
• Design and deliver complex ML solutions spanning teams and systems
• Build reusable ML architectures, pipelines, deployment patterns
• Set ML reliability, scalability, monitoring, and lifecycle management (SLOs)
• Own model architecture and tuning for demanding deployments
• Review designs across ML and software teams and raise risks
• Shape platform roadmap with leadership and coordinate across teams
• Mentor engineers and participate in hiring
• Explain technical trade-offs to stakeholders and document decisions

Skills

Java backend

ML systems

Load testing standards

Distributed systems

Python ML development

Spark/SQL

Cloud: AWS/GCP

Docker/Kubernetes

Communication to execs

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS/Engineering/Math

Tools

Spring Boot

REST APIs

gRPC

JVM tuning

Job description

Wonder is hiring a Staff Machine Learning Engineer with deep Java backend experience to define how models and services interact and to lead cross-team ML initiatives. You will set standards for load testing, performance, and scalability while mentoring engineers and shaping the platform roadmap.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will work on production ML architectures, including training pipelines and real-time serving, within a hybrid office model in New York.