Principal Computer Vision ML Engineer — Remote + Equity

Placements24; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 1,992,000 - 2,988,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work flexibility

Stock options / equity grants

Health and wellness benefits

Professional development budget

Unlimited PTO

Annual retreats (virtual and in-person

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer specializing in computer vision to lead the design, development, and deployment of cutting-edge CV models. This remote-first role with a Cape Town base offers autonomy to drive AI initiatives and collaborate with product managers and researchers.

You will mentor engineers, translate complex problems into scalable solutions, and help set the technical roadmap while staying current with research and industry trends.

Qualifications

• PhD or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, AI, or related field.
• 8+ years hands-on ML engineering experience with a strong CV focus.
• Proven experience leading ML projects from conception to production.
• Expertise in TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras.
• Proficiency in Python and libraries such as OpenCV and scikit-image.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and MLOps practices.
• Strong problem-solving skills and remote, asynchronous collaboration ability.
• Excellent communication to explain complex concepts to non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end development of computer vision models (detection, segmentation, facial recognition).
• Design scalable production-ready ML pipelines for training and inference.
• Conduct research into state-of-the-art CV algorithms and techniques.
• Mentor and guide a team of ML engineers, fostering high performance.
• Collaborate with product teams to translate requirements into technical specs.
• Optimize model performance for efficiency, accuracy, and deployment.
• Develop robust evaluation metrics and validation strategies.
• Stay current with AI/CV research trends and contribute to roadmaps.
• Document research, designs, and implementations thoroughly.

Skills

Leadership

Mentoring

Communication

Remote collaboration

Research & experimentation

Education

PhD or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, AI, or related field

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Keras

OpenCV

scikit-image

AWS

GCP

Azure

MLOps

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer specializing in computer vision to lead the design, development, and deployment of cutting-edge CV models. This remote-first role with a Cape Town base offers autonomy to drive AI initiatives and collaborate with product managers and researchers.

You will mentor engineers, translate complex problems into scalable solutions, and help set the technical roadmap while staying current with research and industry trends.