Research Manager | Production Inference

Meet DeepL. DeepL is a global AI product and research company focused on building secure, intelligent solutions to complex business problems. Over 200,000 business customers and millions of individuals across 228 global markets today trust DeepL's Language AI platform for human-like translation, improved writing, and real-time voice translation. Founded in 2017 by CEO Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski, DeepL now has around 1,000 passionate employees and is supported by world-renowned investors including Benchmark, IVP, and Index Ventures. Our goal is to become the global leader in trusted, intelligent AI technology, building products that drive better communication, foster connections, and create a meaningful impact.

What sets us apart is our blend of cutting-edge AI technology, meaningful work, and a culture where people truly thrive. We’re a team of innovators, researchers, and creators driven by a shared purpose to unlock human potential by making work simpler, smarter, and more connected. When we share what it’s like to work at DeepL, the reactions are overwhelmingly positive. This might be because of our technology that helps millions of people and businesses communicate and work better every day, or because of the trust, curiosity, and care that shape our culture. What we know for sure is this: being part of DeepL means joining a team dedicated to innovation, growth, and well-being.

You will lead the Production Inference team — the group responsible for the systems that serve DeepL's language AI models reliably and efficiently at scale. We sit at the intersection of research-grade technical ambition and production-grade operational discipline: our work determines whether DeepL's models reach users with the latency, reliability, and cost profile that makes commercial deployment viable. The team owns the full model serving stack — from GPU-resident inference runtimes and deployment infrastructure through to the developer platform that enables every other research team to bring their models to production. We operate within the Research organisation, with close ties to DeepL's infrastructure and platform functions, and our architectural decisions affect every product DeepL ships. The broader Research organisation publishes regularly at ACL, NeurIPS, and EMNLP, and the Production Inference team brings that same culture of rigour and innovation to the systems layer of AI.

Your responsibilities as Research Manager for the Production Inference team include:

• Leading and developing a high-performing team of research scientists and ML engineers, building strong development plans, fostering a candid and non-retaliatory feedback culture, and maintaining high standards of technical rigour and delivery.
• Owning the team's research and development roadmap for production inference systems, in close collaboration with senior ICs and cross-functional stakeholders, balancing near-term reliability commitments with longer-horizon research bets on inference efficiency and architecture.
• Acting as the primary technical interface between the Production Inference team and adjacent functions — including foundational models research, voice research, applied research, infrastructure, and product — ensuring research output is well-scoped, well-communicated, and delivered without creating downstream bottlenecks.
• Driving the reliability, efficiency, and cost performance of DeepL's model serving stack, including strategic decisions around serving infrastructure evolution (load balancing, autoscaling, runtime selection, and hardware utilisation).
• Operating with a high degree of autonomy, defining the team's direction and pushing for results in an environment where requirements from product or commercial stakeholders can be ambiguous or evolving.
• Playing an active role in identifying, assessing, and recruiting research and engineering talent as the team continues to develop.

Qualities we look for:

• You hold a PhD (preferable) in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a comparable quantitative discipline, or possess a strong ML/systems background with equivalent research depth.
• You have a strong foundation in production ML systems, inference optimisation, or model serving at scale — direct experience with LLM inference, speculative decoding, quantisation, or serving infrastructure is a meaningful differentiator.
• You have proven experience leading a team of researchers or ML engineers, with a track record of developing talent, maintaining delivery rigour, and holding the balance between research quality and production reliability.
• You are comfortable operating across the full model lifecycle — from training handoff through to production deployment, monitoring, and efficiency improvement — and understand infrastructure and compute constraints without needing to own them directly.
• You have excellent communication skills and the ability to translate complex technical direction into clear goals for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• You are solution-oriented and decisive, able to define direction and drive outcomes without waiting for direction from above.

What we offer:

• Diverse and internationally distributed team: joining our team means becoming part of a large, global community with people of more than 90 nationalities.
• Open communication, regular feedback: as a language-focused company, we value the importance of clear, honest communication.
• Hybrid work, flexible hours: we offer a hybrid work schedule, with team members coming into the office twice a week.
• Virtual Shares - An ownership mindset in every role.
• Regular in-person team events: we bond over vibrant events that are as unique as our team.
• Monthly full-day hacking sessions: every month, we have Hack Fridays, where you can spend your time diving into a project you're passionate about.
• 30 days of annual leave: we value your peace of mind.
• Competitive benefits: we've crafted it to reflect the diversity of our team and tailored it to align with your unique location.

We are an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at DeepL for who you are - we appreciate authenticity here. Our product is for everyone, and so is our workplace.