Remote Source

    Director, Machine Learning Engineering - Surfaces Foundation

    London && Stockholm
    Full-Time
    Mid (3-6 yrs)
    Engineering & Development
    Leadership
    Posted on April 28, 2026
    Spotify’s Surfaces Foundation team builds the systems that power how personalized recommendations show up for hundreds of millions of listeners. From targeting and configuration to serving and evaluation, this team sits at the intersection of machine learning infrastructure and product experience. You’ll lead a group shaping how AI-driven recommendations evolve across every Spotify surface, helping teams move faster while keeping a strong, shared foundation.
    What You'll Do
  1. Lead and support engineering managers and their teams building platform systems for personalized recommendations across Spotify
  2. Set and evolve the technical vision for foundational capabilities, including targeting, serving, evaluation, and agent-driven systems
  3. Make thoughtful decisions about what should become platform capabilities, ensuring teams can move quickly without unnecessary complexity
  4. Guide incremental platform evolution, enabling continuous delivery rather than large, disruptive rewrites
  5. Partner closely with product, data science, and engineering leaders to align priorities across multiple squads
  6. Stay close to the technology when needed, contributing to architecture decisions and resolving complex production challenges
  7. Encourage adoption of AI-assisted development tools and shape how teams use them effectively in day-to-day work
  8. Hire, develop, and grow engineering leaders and individual contributors, building a strong and inclusive team culture
  9. Who You Are
  10. You have experience building and operating machine learning systems at scale in consumer-facing products
  11. You have worked on recommendation systems, ranking, or content delivery platforms and understand end-to-end ML workflows
  12. You bring strong platform thinking, with the ability to decide when to build shared capabilities and when to keep solutions closer to product teams
  13. You are comfortable working with modern AI tools and understand how they influence software development practices
  14. You have led teams through change, supporting adoption of new technologies or ways of working
  15. You collaborate effectively across disciplines and help create alignment across teams with different priorities
  16. You care about building inclusive, supportive team environments and invest in the growth of others
  17. You are comfortable navigating ambiguity and making decisions that balance short-term needs with long-term impact
  18. Where You'll Be
  19. We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! For this role, you can be within the EMEA region as long as we have a work location
  20. This team operates within the Central European and GMT time zone for collaboration.
  21. Apply for this position

    Company:  Spotify

    Music and podcast streaming platform with global reach.
    5001-10000 employees
    Media & Publishing
    HQ: Sweden