Senior Engineering Manager, Data Infra, Machine Learning Platform

Netflix is one of the world’s leading entertainment services with 278 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

The Role

Machine Learning drives innovation across all product functions and decision-support needs, and building highly scalable and differentiated ML infrastructure is critical to accelerating this innovation. The Machine Learning Platform (MLP) org maximizes the business impact of all ML practices at Netflix and innovates on ML infrastructure to support key product functions like personalized recommendations, studio innovations, virtual productions, growth intelligence, and content demand modeling.

The Opportunity

We seek a seasoned engineering leader to lead the Data Infrastructure pillar within our MLP org. In this role, the successful candidate would be responsible for setting up an overall data strategy for all ML use cases at Netflix, building up roadmaps that focus on high-leverage opportunities that significantly advance the state of Netflix's ML data infra, and leading the teams in execution that generates outsized business impact.

The Data Infrastructure pillar’s charter is broad, but it mainly spans across these main areas: 

• Building scalable infrastructure for ML practitioners to acquire and load data for Netflix’s current and next-gen personalization and recommendation model training

• Developing data-related frameworks and services for training machine learning models in various content and studio use cases, including computer vision models, large language models (LLMs), and multi-modal generative models (GenAI). 

• Advancing frameworks and services for feature and label definitions, feature engineering, and data transformations that accelerate iterative model development and high-throughput large-scale model training.

This highly visible role requires building great partnerships with senior engineering and data science leaders. We are looking for a leader with experience leading successful ML infrastructure or platform teams and a strong and in-depth understanding of the experience of ML modeling teams so they can be a strong advocate for ensuring the internal customers have a world-class user experience on our ML Platform.

Expectations

• Vision: Understanding the entertainment business and how machine learning changes the business landscape will allow you to lead your team by providing inspiring context.

• Partnership & Culture: Establishing positive partnerships with both business and technical leaders across Netflix will be critical. We want you to regularly demonstrate Netflix culture values like high performance, selflessness, extraordinary candor, context over control, and curiosity and creativity in all your engagements with colleagues.

• Judgment: Netflix teams tend to be leaner than our peer companies, so you will rely on your judgment to prioritize projects and work closely with your partners and customers.

• Technical acumen: We expect Netflix leaders to be well-versed in their technical domain and use products we build so they can provide guidance for the team when necessary. Proficiency in understanding the needs of research teams and how to implement efficient ML infrastructure to meet those needs will be crucial.

• Recruiting: Your primary responsibility will be building and growing a team of outstanding engineers and managers. You will strive to make the team as excellent as possible, hiring and retaining the best and providing meaningful, timely feedback to those who need it.

Minimum Job Qualifications

• Experience leading large-scale ML platform/infrastructure teams

• 10+ years of total experience and 5+ years of management experience, with a track record of hiring and growing diverse, highly talented tenured engineers and people leaders deep into their careers to maximize their impact

• Strategic & analytical thinking skills combined with curiosity, customer empathy, and the ability to build strong relationships with cross-functional stakeholders

• Excellent at communicating context (written via memo and presentations and verbal in large meetings), giving and receiving feedback, fostering new ideas, and empowering others without micromanagement

• Comfortable managing a hybrid team with team members and partners distributed across (US) geographies & time zones

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with state-of-the-art recommendation model development, foundation model development, or Generative AI model development and infrastructure 

• Built platform offerings for ML Researchers, Engineers, and Data Scientists 

• ML practitioner leader or individual contributor experience owning end-to-end ML functions for a product domain 

• Exposure to modern experimentation and A/B testing methodologies for consumer-facing applications

• Familiarity with Python and deep learning frameworks like Pytorch and TensorFlow and their usage in industry settings

• MS/PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field

To learn more about our ML Platform, you can review the relevant talks/blog posts on the Netflix ML Platform Research website.

Netflix's culture is an integral part of our success, and we approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We are an equal opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that bringing together different perspectives and backgrounds helps build stronger teams. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top-of-market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $190,000 - $1,200,000.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs.  Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more details about our Benefits here.

Netflix has a unique culture and environment.  Learn more here.  

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity of thought and background builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.