Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Estee Lauder is looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to help design, build, test, and deploy production AI products and the platform that powers them. This player-coach role focuses on engineering rigor for stateful and transactional systems, with agentic and LLM-powered capabilities delivered on Google Cloud .

Working onsite in New York, NY , you will partner across engineering, product, and domain experts to build automation, measurement, and modeling workflows, while mentoring engineers and scientists.

What you’ll do

• Design, build, test, and deploy production agentic / LLM-powered products end-to-end on Google Cloud , including shared platform components, tooling, and harnesses.
• Bring software-engineering rigor to services that include stateful and transactional (OLTP) systems , covering data modeling, concurrency, idempotency, reliability, observability, and testing.
• Use classical ML, statistics, and experimentation when needed, including predictive modeling, statistical inference, hypothesis testing, and causal or incrementality measurement.
• Build scalable tools that enable automation across areas such as recommendation and personalization, conversational and customer experiences, and measurement and incrementality.
• Author design documents, maintain standards for clean code and documentation , and review designs and deliverables from others.
• Mentor and grow engineers and scientists, including support for early-career and student mentorship efforts.
• Collaborate cross-functionally on major automation, measurement, and modeling initiatives.
• Participate in Estee Lauder’s diversity and inclusion agenda.

What you’ll bring

• BS/BA in a quantitative or technical field (for example: Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Operations Research, Economics) or equivalent practical experience; graduate degree a plus .
• 5+ years of experience (or 3+ with a graduate degree ) across Software Engineering, Machine Learning, and/or Data Science.
• Strong software engineering in Python , including clean API and service design, data-structure and algorithm fundamentals, and disciplined testing; experience building and operating production-grade services with stateful or transactional systems and databases using SQL and/or NoSQL .
• Experience deploying and operating LLM-powered or agentic systems (examples include retrieval-augmented generation, agents and tool use, structured outputs, evaluation, and safety) or a strong production-ML background with interest in moving into this space.
• Experience deploying and operating systems on a major cloud platform (with Google Cloud a plus ) and solid data-processing practices at scale.
• Ability to use agentic / AI-assisted development tools , with judgment on where they help while maintaining quality.
• A track record of mentorship , continuous learning, a bias for simplicity , and a collaborative shared-ownership style.

Technologies you may work with

• Python, Google Cloud
• SQL, NoSQL
• Retrieval-augmented generation, LLM-powered, agentic systems
• Vertex AI, Cloud Run, BigQuery, Firestore, Pub/Sub
• FastAPI
• Container-based CI/CD
• Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Benefits

• Health insurance coverage (medical, dental, and vision insurance)
• Wellness and family support programs
• Life and disability insurance
• Retirement savings plansPaid leave programs
• Education-related programs
• Paid holidays and vacation time
• Bonus program (highly competitive), with possibility for overachievement
• Participation in the share incentive plan

Preferred / strong plus

• Genuine depth in classical ML / data science / statistics, including statistical modeling, hypothesis testing and experimentation, causal inference and incrementality, and predictive modeling
• Hands-on experience in NLP, agent frameworks, or advanced statistical methods
• Familiarity with Google Cloud (Vertex AI, Cloud Run, BigQuery, Firestore, Pub/Sub), async Python (FastAPI), container-based CI/CD, and Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• Experience designing a technical roadmap and leading execution in a business environment

Pay range

• The anticipated base salary range is $119,300.00 to $196,600.00 per year.
• Exact salary depends on factors such as experience, skills, education, and budget.
• The salary range may vary based on geographic location.
• In addition to base salary, the role is eligible for a highly competitive bonus program and participation in the share incentive plan.