Director of Data Engineering and ML Platform

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.

About Preply

Preply is a global language learning platform that connects learners and tutors powered by AI-driven matching, personalization, and content recommendation. Our mission is to unlock human potential through learning.

We’re building a data and AI foundation that allows every learner’s experience to be personalized and every tutor to succeed. Our next stage of growth requires scaling our data and machine learning infrastructure to power real-time, intelligent, and adaptive learning experiences at global scale. This is a pivotal leadership role. You’ll build the engineering foundation for AI at Preply, a platform that allows every learner interaction to become smarter over time, partnering closely with the Applied AI scientists for this.

If you’re a builder who loves scaling data and ML systems and wants to make AI tangible in millions of learners’ lives, we’d love to hear from you.

The Role

We are seeking a Director of ML Platform & Data Engineering to lead the next generation of Preply’s data and ML infrastructure.

This leader will build and scale the systems, tools, and teams that enable applied scientists and engineers to develop, deploy, and monitor ML models at scale, from data ingestion to feature computation, model training, deployment, and real-time inference.

You will manage Data Engineering, LLM Ops and ML Platform teams, owning the end-to-end foundation that powers all AI systems at scale. This includes oversight of both data engineering for ML (feature pipelines, real-time and streaming data systems), ML platform infrastructure (training, serving, monitoring, and MLOps), and optimization and scaling of how we use LLMs and Generative AI, ensuring Preply’s platform is built on robust, efficient, and future-ready AI infrastructure.

What You’ll Do

• Define and own the vision for Preply’s Data & ML Platform, unifying data engineering, ML infrastructure, and MLOps into a cohesive, scalable ecosystem.
• Coach, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of ML and data engineers, fostering technical excellence, strong collaboration, and a culture of continuous improvement.
• Raise the bar for engineering quality and design standards across data and ML systems, ensuring reliability, scalability, and maintainability, including LLMs.
• Lead and scale the Data & ML Platform organization responsible for real-time pipelines, feature computation, and ML platform services. Help us to effectively use LLMs and scale.
• Design and implement robust, self-service infrastructure for scientists and engineers — including feature stores, training environments, deployment frameworks, and monitoring systems.
• Collaborate closely with Applied AI, Platform, Data Foundations, and Product Engineering to enable rapid experimentation, continuous learning, and reliable model delivery to production.
• Drive platform reliability and efficiency — ensuring data and ML systems are secure, cost-effective, observable, and performant at scale.
• Shape Preply’s data moat, ensuring data accessibility, reusability, and consistency across online and offline systems.
• Partner with the VP of Data & Applied AI and the CTO to define long-term architectural vision, hiring plans, and organizational evolution as Preply scales AI capabilities.
  
  

What You’ll Need

• Proven experience leading and building both modern data engineering and ML platform systems, ideally 7+ years in data and ML infrastructure, including at least 4 years in leadership roles.
• Hands-on, end-to-end experience across data pipelines, feature stores, model training infrastructure, deployment, and MLOps, including LLMs.
• A strong track record of building and scaling data and ML platforms at a technology or product company (experience in edtech or marketplace environments is a plus).
• Deep technical expertise in modern data and ML stacks, .e.g., Kafka, Spark, Airflow, SageMaker, MLflow, or similar cloud-native architectures.
• Practical understanding of machine learning workflows and the infrastructure required to support them (feature computation, training, deployment, monitoring).
• Experience managing and growing cross-functional engineering teams spanning data engineering, ML engineering, and platform infrastructure.
• Ability to coach, mentor, and elevate senior engineers while setting high technical and architectural standards. A bias toward action, ownership, and continuous improvement in a fast-moving environment.
• Strong product mindset — able to translate AI and business objectives into scalable platform capabilities. Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to align across data, applied AI, and engineering organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to partner closely with applied scientists and researchers — understanding their workflows, translating modeling requirements into platform capabilities, and accelerating model-to-production delivery.
  
  

Why you’ll love it at Preply

• An open, collaborative, dynamic and diverse culture;
• A generous monthly allowance for lessons onPreply.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. Every day we focus on empowering tutors to deliver an exceptional learning experience.
• Keep perfecting - To create an outstanding customer experience, we focus on simplicity, smoothness, and enjoyment, continually perfecting it as every detail matters.
• Now is the time - In a fast-paced world, it matters how quickly we act. Now is the time to make great things happen.
• Disciplined execution - What makes us disciplined is the excellence in our execution. We set clear goals, focus on what matters, and utilize our resources efficiently.
• Dive deep - We leverage business acumen and curiosity to investigate disparities between numbers and stories, unlocking meaningful insights to guide our decisions.
• Growth mindset - We proactively seek growth opportunities and believe today's best performance becomes tomorrow's starting point. We humbly embrace feedback and learn from setbacks.
• Raise the bar - We raise our performance standards continuously, alongside each new hire and promotion. We build diverse and high-performing teams that can make a real difference.
• Challenge, disagree and commit - We value open and candid communication, even when we don’t fully agree. We speak our minds, challenge when necessary, and fully commit to decisions once made.
• One Preply - We prioritize collaboration, inclusion, and the success of our team over personal ambitions. Together, we support and celebrate each other's progress.
  
  

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

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. That means that Preply will consider all applications for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or veteran status.