Machine Learning Engineering Manager, Search & Recommendations

About this role

<div class="content-intro"><h2 style="font-family: GothamBold,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #662d91;">Teamwork makes the stream work.</h2> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h3 style="font-family: GothamBold,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;"><strong>Roku is changing how the world watches TV</strong></h3> <p>Roku is the #1 TV streaming platform in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and we've set our sights on powering every television in the world. Roku pioneered streaming to the TV. Our mission is to be the TV streaming platform that connects the entire TV ecosystem. We connect consumers to the content they love, enable content publishers to build and monetize large audiences, and provide advertisers unique capabilities to engage consumers.</p> <p>From your first day at Roku, you'll make a valuable - and valued - contribution. We're a fast-growing public company where no one is a bystander. We offer you the opportunity to delight millions of TV streamers around the world while gaining meaningful experience across a variety of disciplines.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p></div><h3>What does the team work on?</h3> <p>The Recommendations team builds the machine learning systems behind Roku's highest-impact consumer experiences. Our models power Home Screen recommendations, content browse and discovery, Live TV and Sports personalization, and subscription growth — reaching over 100 million active accounts globally. We work at the intersection of multi-objective optimization, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and generative AI to help every Roku viewer discover content they love. The team operates across the US, UK, and India, and collaborates closely with Product, Engineering, and cross-functional stakeholders.</p> <h3>What is the role?</h3> <p>We are looking for an Engineering Manager, Machine Learning to lead a team of ML engineers in Bengaluru focused on recommendation systems. This is a leadership role — you will set technical direction, design systems, mentor engineers, and drive delivery of ML solutions that directly impact user engagement, retention, and Roku's revenue growth. The ideal candidate brings deep understanding of and passion for consumer-facing ML products, and is ready to multiply their impact through a team.</p> <h3><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">How will I use AI&nbsp;</span><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">at</span><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">&nbsp;Roku?</span></span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"134245418":true,"134245529":true,"335559738":160,"335559739":80}">&nbsp;</span></h3> <p><span data-contrast="none">At Roku, we don’t just use AI; we work with it. AI agents and smart tools help power drafts, analysis, and repetitive workflows, while our people bring direction, judgment, and accountability.&nbsp;</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></p> <p><strong><span data-contrast="none">We value</span></strong><span data-contrast="none"> curious, adaptable builders who can show how&nbsp;they’ve&nbsp;used AI, agents, or automation to move faster, improve quality, and scale their impact. Strong candidates know how to frame problems, guide AI-assisted work, check the output, and learn quickly.&nbsp;Above all, they&nbsp;bring curiosity, adaptability, and sound judgment.</span><span data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false,"134233118":false,"201341983":0,"335551550":1,"335551620":1,"335559685":0,"335559737":0,"335559738":0,"335559739":160,"335559740":278}">&nbsp;</span></p> <h3>What are the responsibilities of the role?</h3> <ul> <li>Lead, mentor, and grow a team of ML engineers; foster a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and collaboration</li> <li>Set the technical roadmap, aligning priorities across the team and within the broader Recommendations organization</li> <li>Drive system design and architecture decisions for ML models powering content ranking, user modeling, multi-objective optimization, and personalization across Roku's key surfaces</li> <li>Provide technical leadership on model architecture choices, training and serving infrastructure, and evaluation methodologies</li> <li>Own the A/B experimentation and measurement strategy for your team's surfaces; ensure ML work is tied to measurable product and business outcomes</li> <li>Champion the adoption of generative AI to push the boundaries of recommendation and personalization</li> <li>Partner with Product, Engineering, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate business goals into ML solutions</li> <li>Recruit and develop ML talent in Bengaluru; establish strong engineering practices and a high hiring bar</li> <li>Balance long-term research investments with near-term production improvements across multiple concurrent workstreams<br><br></li> </ul> <h3>What experience would help someone be successful in this role at Roku?</h3> <ul> <li>10+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, with a strong track record of shipping models to production in consumer-facing products (recommendations, search,&nbsp;ads, personalization, or similar domains)</li> <li>Experience managing an ML or software engineering team</li> <li>BS/MS in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related quantitative field; PhD is a plus</li> <li>Deep expertise in recommendation system architectures, deep neural networks, and ranking models</li> <li>Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience writing production-quality code</li> <li>Experience with large-scale ML tooling and infrastructure: PyTorch/TensorFlow, Spark, Airflow, cloud-native MLOps platforms</li> <li>Experience with multi-objective optimization, reinforcement learning, or Bayesian methods in production settings</li> <li>Familiarity with LLM-based approaches for recommendations, content understanding, or generative personalization</li> <li>Demonstrated ability to connect ML work to measurable product and business outcomes</li> <li>Experience building and scaling ML teams in a distributed or multi-site setting</li> </ul> <p>&nb