Engineering Manager for ML Platform in London

This job is brought to you by Jobs/Redefined, the UK's leading over-50s age inclusive jobs board. We power people's progress. At Preply, we're all about creating life-changing learning experiences. We help people discover the magic of the perfect tutor, craft a personalized learning journey, and stay motivated to keep growing. Our approach is human-led, tech-enabled - and it's creating real impact. So far, 90,000 tutors have delivered over 20 million lessons to learners in more than 175 countries. Every Preply lesson sparks change, fuels ambition, and drives progress that matters.

Meet the Team

The Preply Engineering Team provides the tools to help unlock human potential through learning. At Preply, we build scalable and reliable applications using Python/Django, with a strong focus on data, A/B testing, and feedback from students and tutors to guide our decisions. We prioritize product quality through robust monitoring, metrics analysis, and continuous optimization. Thanks to our advanced CI/CD processes, we release code 50-60 times per day. As a fast‐growing company, we face a wide range of technical challenges, giving our engineers plenty of opportunities to grow and make an impact, some of which we even share on our Engineering Blog.

We're looking for a hands‐on Engineering Manager to lead our Machine Learning Platform team, a strategic platform team focused on enabling scalable, production‐grade ML capabilities across Preply. This is a high‐impact, cross‐cutting role at the intersection of infrastructure, data engineering, and ML systems.

What you'll be doing:

• Lead and support a high‐performing team of senior engineers focused on ML infrastructure, data streaming, and scalable systems.
• Build reusable tools, abstractions, and self‐service capabilities to make ML at Preply faster, safer, and more reliable.
• Mentor and grow engineers through regular feedback, mentorship, and career growth opportunities, with a focus on creating an inclusive and collaborative environment.
• Identify and prioritize high‐impact opportunities in collaboration with DS/ML teams, platform teams, and product leadership.
• Own execution and delivery, ensuring technical quality, reliability, and timely outcomes.
• Provide technical leadership: guide system design and architectural decisions, help navigate trade‐offs, and remove technical blockers.
• Champion engineering best practices, from code quality to scalable processes and tech stack evolution.

What you need to succeed

Must‐Haves

• Proven experience designing and scaling ML infrastructure or big data platforms in production.
• Strong background in ML Ops, data streaming (Kafka), feature stores, model deployment, or real‐time processing.
• Hands‐on engineering experience and strong system design fundamentals.
• Experience collaborating with DS/ML teams, empowering them with scalable tooling and workflows.
• Experience in building, leading, and scaling development teams.
• Ethical Leadership: Lead the team by example, demonstrating unwavering commitment to ethical behavior and integrity.

Nice‐to‐Haves

• Previous experience at high‐scale product companies.
• Experience migrating ML platforms from MVP to production.
• Familiarity with Databricks, Airflow, AWS, Kubernetes, and streaming systems.
• Background in Big Data architecture (as an alternative to direct ML experience).

Why you'll love it at Preply:

• An open, collaborative, dynamic and diverse culture;
• A generous monthly allowance for lessons on Preply.com, Learning & Development budget, and time off for your self‐development;
• A competitive financial package with equity, leave allowance, and health insurance;
• Access to free mental health support platforms;
• The opportunity to unlock the potential of learners and tutors through language learning and teaching in 175 countries (and counting!).

Our Principles

• Care to change the world - We are passionate about our work and care deeply about its impact to be life changing.
• We do it for learners - For both Preply and tutors, learners are why we do what we do.
• Keep perfecting - To create an outstanding customer experience, we focus on simplicity, smoothness, and enjoyment.
• Now is the time - In a fast‐paced world, it matters how quickly we act.
• Disciplined execution - What makes us disciplined is the excellence in our execution.
• Dive deep - We leverage business acumen and curiosity to investigate disparities between numbers and stories.
• Growth mindset - We proactively seek growth opportunities and believe today's best performance becomes tomorrow's starting point.
• Raise the bar - We raise our performance standards continuously.
• Challenge, disagree and commit - We value open and candid communication.
• One Preply - We prioritize collaboration, inclusion, and the success of our team over personal ambitions.

Preply.com is committed to creating an inclusive environment where people of diverse backgrounds can thrive. We believe that the presence of different opinions and viewpoints is a key ingredient for our success as a multicultural Ed‐Tech company.