Senior ML Platform Engineer, Rakuten Kobo

• 8+ years of professional experience in ML Engineering or related fields, with a significant portion dedicated to ML Platform development
• Proven experience leading the design, development, and implementation of a custom ML Platform or significant MLOps infrastructure for an organization. This is the most crucial must-have
• Deep expertise in MLOps tools and their integration into a platform, including:
• Orchestration: Kubeflow, Airflow, Argo Workflows, Step Functions, Vertex AI Pipelines
• Experiment Tracking & Model Registry: MLflow, DVC, Vertex AI ML Metadata, SageMaker Experiments/Model Registry
• Model Monitoring & Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Arize, Sagemaker Model Monitor, Vertex AI Model Monitoring
• Data/Model Versioning: DVC, Git-LFS, internal systems
• Feature Stores: Feast, Hops-works, or custom-built
• CI/CD for ML: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, BuildKite, ArgoCD (GitOps)
• Containerization & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm
• Strong proficiency in Python
• Extensive Cloud Experience, with a strong preference for GCP. This includes hands-on experience with GCP MLOps services (Vertex AI, Dataflow, BigQuery ML, Cloud Build, GKE, Cloud Composer)
• Experience moving companies from manual to automated processes at scale, particularly in the context of ML development and deployment
• Demonstrated Seniority: Ability to lead projects, make architectural decisions, mentor junior engineers, and influence technical strategy. This includes communicating complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Solid understanding of ML fundamentals (predictive modeling, deep learning, GenAI/LLMs are a plus but secondary to platform expertise)
• Strong understanding of data ingestion pipelines and experiment tracking tools
• Ability to enforce reproducibility and lineage tracking
• Familiarity with Kubeflow and/or TFX
• Proven ability to design and implement CI/CD pipeline for ML (automated training, testing, and deployment, integration with GitHub or Cloud Build)
• Experience with model versioning and registry (Vertex AI Model Registry)
• Knowledge of Feature Store design
• Ability to setup automated monitoring for data and model drift, model performance
• Experience setting up observability stacks (logging, metrics, alerts, model health dashboards)
• Proficiency in Python (mandatory), familiarity with R/Scala/Java as needed
• Experience with containerization (docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes, GKE) Strong background in infrastructure-as-a-code (Terraform, Deployment Manager)
• Ability to implement unit tests, integration tests, and ML-specific validation
• Knowledge of responsible AI practices (bias, explainability)
• Familiarity with data governance, security and compliance standards
• Strong ability to document and enforce coding standards, review processes, and reproducibility guidelines

Desirable

• Rakuten Kobo Inc. is seeking a visionary and highly skilled Senior ML Platform Engineer to architect, build, and lead the evolution of our internal Machine Learning Platform and MLOps capabilities
• In this pivotal role, you will define the strategic roadmap and hands-on implementation for a state-of-the-art, fully automated ML framework on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• You will be instrumental in designing and developing the core infrastructure, tools, and services that empower our Data Scientists and ML Engineers to efficiently develop, deploy, monitor, and manage their Machine Learning models throughout their lifecycle
• Collaborating closely with Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Platform Engineers, and business stakeholders, you will transform manual ML production processes into a seamless, scalable, and reproducible ML Platform
• This groundbreaking position is dedicated to streamlining the entire ML project lifecycle by providing a robust, self-service platform, ensuring the continuous delivery of significant business value through innovative Machine Learning solutions
• Success in this role demands not only profound ML engineering and platform-building expertise but also a strategic, forward-thinking mindset for seamlessly integrating ML/AI into the core of our engineering practices at scale

• Rakuten Kobo would like to thank all applicants for their interest in this role however only qualified candidates will be shortlisted