Spotify
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Personalization
New York, NY · Senior
Stay score
odds of building a lasting career here
Sponsors, but it's cap-subject — you still face the weighted lottery (~61% per draw at Level IV). Good if you win; have a cap-exempt backup on your list.
Lottery odds assume a STEM candidate.
Personalize to your clock →H-1B wage level
the lottery is wage-weighted — each level is one more entry
$9,412 more — $193,461 — moves this role to Level IV and 4 lottery entries. That figure is inside the range the employer already advertised.
Based on the DOL prevailing wage for this occupation and worksite, a base salary of $193,461 would place this position at wage Level IV. That figure is within the posted range, and I'd like to target it. This role classifies under "Software Developers" for prevailing-wage purposes.
DOL prevailing wage, 2026-27 wage year · Software Developers (15-1252) · New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. Wage level is derived by USCIS from the offered wage, occupation and worksite; the occupation shown is inferred from the job title.
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About the role
- The Personalization team makes deciding what to play next easier and more enjoyable for every listener.
- From Blend to Discover Weekly, we're behind some of Spotify's most-loved features.
- We built them by understanding the world of music and podcasts better than anyone else.
Responsibilities
- Develop and optimize ranking and backend retrieval systems that help listeners discover music, videos, audiobooks, and other content.
- Explore emerging AI and agentic approaches to create more intuitive and conversational Search experiences.
- Partner with engineers, product managers, designers, and researchers to identify opportunities and deliver meaningful improvements to Search.
- Use experimentation, data analysis, and performance metrics to understand model behavior, validate hypotheses, and improve the listener experience.
- You understand how to design and evaluate experiments, interpret model performance, and translate technical findings into product improvements.
- We explore, define, build, validate, and optimize new ideas to help listeners discover the content they love.
Requirements
- You have experience and a desire to lean into backend engineering at Spotify scale.
- You are curious about emerging AI technologies, including large language models and agentic systems, and interested in their potential to improve discovery experiences.
- You are comfortable navigating ambiguity, taking ownership of complex challenges, and balancing experimentation with practical delivery.
- You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what's playing in your headphones.
Compensation
- The United States base range for this position is 184,049–262,928 USD, plus equity.
Benefits
- Build and improve machine learning models that make Spotify Search more relevant, personalized, and engaging for listeners.
- Design, implement, and evaluate machine learning solutions, taking ideas from early experimentation through production.
- Contribute to scalable machine learning infrastructure and engineering practices that support reliable, high-quality Search experiences.
- Share knowledge, challenge assumptions constructively, and help shape the technical direction of machine learning within the squad.
- You have experience building, deploying, and improving machine learning systems in production environments.
- You have a strong understanding of machine learning approaches for information retrieval, search ranking, recommendation systems, or personalization.
- You are proficient in Python and comfortable working with modern machine learning frameworks and data processing tools.
- We're looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to help shape the next generation of Search at Spotify.
- You'll work at the intersection of machine learning, personalization, and product development, turning complex challenges into intuitive discovery experiences for millions of listeners.
- You have experience working with large-scale datasets and understand the challenges of building reliable, scalable machine learning systems.
- You enjoy working across disciplines, communicating technical ideas clearly, and learning from different perspectives.
Company info
- Where You'll Be - This role is based in Eastern Standard Time - We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best!
- At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone.
This listing is sourced directly from Spotify's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.