Machine Learning Team Leader

Our client is a global leader in cybersecurity for IT, OT, and ICS critical infrastructure. Their end-to-end platform gives enterprises and public sector organizations the critical advantage they need to protect complex networks, secure devices, and meet compliance requirements.
Over the past 20 years, a consistent commitment to innovative technology has earned the trust of more than 1,700 organizations, governments, and institutions worldwide — cementing the company's role in protecting the world's critical infrastructure and securing our way of life.
Lead, mentor, and empower a team of ML Engineers to own model quality end-to-end—from initial experimentation to a production-ready, handoff-able artifact—for AI/ML detection portfolio, spanning MetaDefender Aether (Threat Pattern Correlator, URL Reputation Predictor, Brand Spoofing Detector, and Web Threat Analyzer).
Your Role Will be:
People & Performance Management: Conduct regular 1-on-1s to foster career development, provide continuous constructive feedback, remove blockers, and ensure the team's overall well-being
Daily Work Organization: Drive the team's execution rhythms by leading task prioritization, sprint planning, and resource allocation to ensure predictable, high-quality delivery
Cross-Functional Representation: Champion the team's achievements and roadmap to stakeholders, acting as the primary technical liaison and aligning efforts with Data Science, Development, and Product management teams
Technical Roadmap Ownership: Lead model experimentation strategies, prioritizing architectural improvements based on measurable detection accuracy gains and business impact
End-to-End Model Development: Guide the design, training, fine-tuning, and evaluation of ML models across diverse detection modalities (malware similarity search, URL reputation, phishing/brand-spoofing image analysis, and web threat classification)
Quality & Release Standards: Define model quality metrics, evaluation datasets, and acceptance criteria. Establish strict model release contracts (versioned, runtime-portable artifacts like ONNX, performance benchmarks) for the Java-based Aether backend
Production Readiness: Ensure all deployed models meet rigorous operational constraints across cloud, offline, air-gapped, and embedded deployment tiers
Requirements
Proven experience directly managing or leading technical teams, including conducting 1-on-1s, managing performance, and organizing daily workflows
3+ years applied ML experience across at least two of: text/content classification, computer vision, similarity search/embedding models, malware, or threat detection
Strong proficiency in Python and frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow, alongside deep experience with model evaluation frameworks
Demonstrated history of shipping models consumed by other engineering teams with clean, well-documented handoff contracts
Solid grounding in statistics and rigorous experiment design
Nice to have
Security ML domain experience (malware family classification, phishing detection, URL reputation)
Experience with model compression or quantization for offline and embedded environments
Benefits
Stable, growing international company background with an exceptional customer group
Opportunity to improve your professional skills
The newest technology environment
Language course and opportunity for active recreation – kettlebell, football and office massage
Attractive working environment – nice office full of accessories (fruits every day, coffee, breakfast, tea etc.)
Regular team events and Happy Hour activities

Work arrangement
No