Machine Learning Engineering, Senior Specialist

Location: Hyderabad, India

About Vanguard

Founded in 1975, Vanguard is one of the world's leading investment management companies. The firm offers investments, advice, and retirement services to tens of millions of individual investors around the globe—directly, through workplace plans, and through financial intermediaries.

Vanguard India

Vanguard’s office in India is a significant milestone in our global expansion. We are committed to establishing an enduring technology center in Hyderabad, Telangana and are excited to be adding talent who will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), mobile, and cloud-based technologies that drive our business outcomes and deliver a world-class experience for our clients.

Role Summary

Serve as the technical lead for a team of engineers building enterprise-scale AI evaluation and platform capabilities. The role will focus on designing and building AI/GenAI evaluation harnesses, scalable platform infrastructure, and production AI quality and observability. We are looking for a hands-on engineering leader who sets technical direction, owns architecture, and raises the bar through code, design reviews, and mentorship, while partnering across product, platform, architecture, and governance teams.

Responsibilites

• Leads complex model development and deployment pipelines. Establishes best practices and drives innovation in data preparation and consumption. Expert in end-to-end data and model pipeline deployment and automation technologies.
• Integrates and optimizes existing complex data and model pipelines in a production environment. Identifies and diagnoses data inconsistencies and errors, documents assumptions, and forages to fill data gaps. Applies expert knowledge of experimental methodologies, statistics, optimization, probability theory, and machine learning concepts to create self-running artificial intelligence (AI) systems to automate predictive models. Expert level knowledge in SDLC and related tools and processes. Serves as a thought partner for Machine Learning Operations team.
• Leads engineering design for complex data pipeline designs. Proficient in developing highly efficient designs and strategy for both batch and real-time data pipelines.
• Partners with data science teams to understand data requirements, performs data discovery for model development. Performs detailed analysis of raw data sources for data quality, applies business context, and model development needs. Drives best practices and innovation in data discovery techniques.
• Engages with internal stakeholders to understand and probe business processes and develop hypotheses. Brings structure to requests and translates requirements into an analytic approach. Participates in and influences ongoing business planning and departmental prioritization activities.
• Writes model monitoring scripts as needed. Diagnoses root causes based on model monitoring alerts and triages issues. Coordinates and plans response to model monitoring alerts and resolves issues.
• Serves as a machine learning engineering subject matter expert on cross functional teams for large strategic initiatives and contributes to the growth of the Vanguard analytic community. Serves as data and Machine Learning engineering thought partner for the enterprise.
• Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.
• Designs advanced analytical protocols for mining large-scale datasets to uncover predictive patterns and optimize strategic initiatives.
• Applies big data modeling techniques across domains such as market intelligence, advertising, and scientific research to inform critical business decisions.
• Explores cutting-edge AI and data science frameworks to develop scalable, next-gen machine learning architectures.

Qualifications and Skills

• Minimum 10 years of experience in machine learning engineering or advanced data science roles
• Bachelor’s degree (B.E./B.Tech) in Computer Science, Data Science, or AI/ML; Master’s degree/Diploma preferred in a relevant technical field
• Experience setting technical direction and mentoring engineers on complex AI/ML systems
• Deep hands-on expertise building AI/GenAI evaluation, benchmarking, and evaluation harnesses
• Expert Python and strong software/platform engineering fundamentals
• AWS and cloud-native architecture design and implementation
• Experience building LLM/GenAI systems, observability, monitoring, and production readiness
• MLOps/LLMOps, CI/CD, APIs, and scalable distributed systems
• Strong communication of technical tradeoffs to cross-functional partners and senior stakeholders

Experience in regulated enterprise environments preferred

Location

This role is based in Hyderabad, Telangana at Vanguard India. Only qualified external applicants will be considered.

Our mission

Vanguard adheres to a simple purpose: To take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success.

Our commitment to you

Vanguard takes the same long-term view of your success—at work and in life—with Benefits and Rewards packages that reflect what you care about, throughout all the phases and stages of your life. Our Total Rewards programs provide you and your loved ones with wellness support for key areas in your life:

Financial wellness

We're committed to enabling your financial success and provide competitive offers and programs.

Physical wellness

We're committed to providing benefits that support your physical health and wellness.

Personal wellness

We're committed to providing resources that help support the full scope of your life.

How we work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for most of our employees (crew members), designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.