At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the development of machine learning systems for content understanding and safety at Spotify.
- Company: Join Spotify, a global leader in music and podcast streaming.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, equity, health insurance, generous leave, and flexible work options.
- Other info: Collaborative environment with opportunities for mentorship and career growth.
- Why this job: Shape the future of content interaction and make a real impact on millions of users.
- Qualifications: Experience in building production-grade ML systems and knowledge of modern ML frameworks.
We design Spotify’s consumer experience—end to end, moment to moment, across every screen, platform, and partner integration. Our mission is to make listening feel effortless, personal, and joyful for billions of users around the world. That means turning complexity into clarity across hundreds of touchpoints—from our mobile and desktop apps to the smart speakers, TVs, cars, and integrations where Spotify shows up every day. If it touches a consumer, we shape it. We bring deep insight into human behavior, design, and technology to craft experiences that feel intuitive, expressive, and unmistakably Spotify.
The Content Platform team powers the full lifecycle of content across music, podcasts, audiobooks, and emerging formats at Spotify. We ensure that everything from licensed catalog to user-generated content is understood, trusted, safe, and high quality for millions of listeners worldwide. Our systems are responsible for how content is ingested, understood, enriched, governed, and distributed across the platform. As the scale and diversity of content continue to grow—driven by advances in AI, new creation tools, and emerging content formats—we’re investing in intelligent systems that can understand, evaluate, manage, and route content reliably at global scale.
We’re hiring Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineers to build and scale foundational ML systems that power content understanding, safety, policy enforcement, and decisioning across Spotify. Depending on your experience and interests, you may focus on areas ranging from multimodal content understanding and platform-level ML systems to safety, risk detection, policy enforcement, and compliance. You’ll help shape the architecture and technical strategy behind how Spotify understands and makes decisions about content at global scale. This work is foundational to delivering safe, high-quality experiences for listeners and creators while enabling new ways for people to interact with content across Spotify.
What You Will Do
- Define and drive machine learning strategy across content understanding, safety, policy enforcement, and platform-level decisioning.
- Build and scale production ML systems for classification, moderation, ranking, risk detection, and content evaluation.
- Develop automated decisioning systems that support content quality, integrity, safety, and policy compliance at scale.
- Design and deploy ML systems across multiple content modalities, including text, audio, image, and video.
- Build systems capable of evaluating and making decisions about content in real time and at Spotify scale.
- Enable controlled and reliable access to content and metadata for downstream products and applications.
- Collaborate closely with Product, Policy, Trust & Safety, and Engineering teams to translate content standards into scalable technical solutions.
- Advance automation while maintaining high standards for quality, safety, fairness, explainability, and reliability.
- Provide technical leadership across teams, mentoring engineers and influencing ML engineering, evaluation, and system design best practices.
Who You Are
- You have significant experience designing and building production-grade machine learning systems at scale.
- You have deep experience with modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or similar.
- You have experience with—or a strong interest in—multimodal machine learning across areas such as text, audio, image, or video.
- You have built systems where machine learning outputs inform or automate real-world decisions.
- You understand how to balance automation with quality, safety, reliability, and user experience.
- You’re comfortable tackling complex and ambiguous technical problems with significant product and business impact.
- You think in systems, connecting models, data, infrastructure, and decisioning to platform-level outcomes and user experiences.
- You care deeply about data quality, rigorous evaluation, fairness, explainability, and system reliability.
- You’re an experienced technical leader who communicates clearly, mentors others, and can influence across technical and non‑technical teams.
Where You Will Be
This role is based in New York. We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in‑person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home.
Compensation and Benefits
The United States base range for this position is $281,196 - $401,709 plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, 13 paid flexible holidays, paid sick leave. These ranges may be modified in the future.
Software Engineering in London employer: MagicBox
MagicBox provides a collaborative work environment where employees can engage in impactful projects that shape the future of content delivery. The company emphasizes professional development and offers opportunities to work with advanced technologies in a global setting.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Software Engineering in London
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at MagicBox or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to MagicBox.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like MagicBox.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like MagicBox that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Software Engineering in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at MagicBox.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at MagicBox and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at MagicBox
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If MagicBox uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.