Staff / Senior Machine Learning/Data Engineer

Staff / Senior Machine Learning/Data Engineer 

The Opportunity

Do you want to just build software, or do you want to build software that helps people improve their lives? Viamo is a mission-driven organization and communication platform that is supporting people in geographies with minimal access to the Internet (take a look at some examples of our impact here). With everything that has happened in the past few years, many of us have reconsidered what we want to do with our lives and how we can make a meaningful impact. Viamo is a place where you can work with talented, driven, and thoughtful people to improve the world for the better. If that sounds intriguing, please read on…

We are looking for a passionate and experienced Staff / Senior ML/Data Engineer to design and develop high-quality, modern data-driven solutions to fulfill our mission. You will be building software that is currently used in 40+ countries (primarily across Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean) to give connectivity to people with limited technology. You will be part of a team that is building, scaling, and maintaining Viamo's products including our large-scale web application and communication platform that processes 4 million+ interactions a day and positively impacts millions of lives. In the years ahead, we are aiming to scale our platform strategy to go beyond sharing information: connecting 100 million active users to vital services and many of the benefits of the digital economy.

All our users need is a simple mobile phone and a mobile connection to get access to vital information and services. Through channels such as text messaging and Interactive Voice Response (as well as internet-based channels such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp), end-users who are farmers, expectant mothers, small business owners, and others can get access to life-changing information. Throughout the COVID pandemic, Viamo's platform was key to efforts in many countries to get public health information out to hard-to-reach populations. 

We are looking for a Staff or Senior-level Machine Learning/Data Engineer who has been doing ML-focused development for 8+ years with backend development experience. Ideally, has formal training in Computer Science or Software Engineering. Specifically, we are looking for an Engineer to help us design, build, and maintain scalable Machine Learning solutions that optimize our user's experience on our platform. Experience with recommender systems and personalization engines would be a huge asset. 

The successful candidate will have experience with large-scale distributed systems and ML technologies coupled with a solid understanding of database and data analytics. It would be an advantage, although not a prerequisite, to have experience in some or all of our key tech stack components, including:

• MySQL
• BigQuery
• Google Data Studio
• PHP / Laravel

(The list above represents the key ones - we use many other technologies, including AWS, Docker, Ansible, Jenkins, BitBucket, etc.)

We are new to the world of Machine Learning, so we would expect you to help advise us on some of the tools and frameworks to use.

Strong written and verbal communication skills are a prerequisite, as we are a very team-oriented company working remotely with colleagues across the world, so clear communication is central to our success. We appreciate people who balance thinking long-term and pursuing technical excellence and are focused on delivering value to users. We are experienced Agile / Scrum practitioners and we operate in multi-disciplinary product crews towards shared success. If you are an independent, self-starting, and quality-minded developer with top-notch communication and analytical skills, we would like to talk to you.

About Viamo

At Viamo, we envision a world where all people have access to the information they need to make decisions for healthy, prosperous lives, and have meaningful relationships with governments, civil society, and businesses.

With more than 300 team members spread across 25 countries, and serving projects in more than 40 countries, we truly work on a global scale to catalyze a mobile tech movement. We are connecting nonprofits, governments, and businesses to the people they serve using the digital technologies they already have in their pockets (voice calls, interactive SMS, and social network chatbots). The majority of our Engineering team is based in Canada, but we have team members all over the world.

At Viamo, we value Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion. We know that diverse perspectives and experiences make our products, services, and teams stronger. 

Did you know?

HR research shows that men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the criteria, but women and other under-represented people often apply only if they feel they check 100% of the requirements.  We would love to see your application even if you don't feel you hit every point below. If you think this role looks like something you want to do and could grow into - we are excited to see your application!

Key Responsibilities

As a Staff / Senior ML/ Data Engineer, your responsibilities include:

• Design, build, and maintain scalable and efficient data pipelines and data infrastructure to support data processing and analytics requirements.
• Architect and develop reliable technical backend/data solutions optimized for efficiency, performance, and scalability.
• Develop data models, ETL workflows, and data quality checks to ensure data accuracy and consistency.
• Ensure data security and privacy are maintained across all data processing and storage systems.
• Design, implement, test, and maintain scalable ML models

What's in it for you?

• A chance to do work that is genuinely meaningful with peers who are talented, driven, and thoughtful
• Fully remote role - work from anywhere you have an internet connection and can be productive 
• Flexible work schedule
• Unlimited vacation
• Health benefits plan
• Continuous learning opportunities and support for professional development. 

About you

• Desired experience:
  • Experience with ML technologies and languages, preferably including recommendation engines, NLP, etc
  • Scalable, Back-end development experience (we process 1M calls per day)
  • Have designed, built, and maintained scalable data pipelines and data infrastructure
  • Have a deep understanding of database and data analytics technologies.
  • Ideally, you have experience with recommendation or prediction engines, as our near-term work includes optimizing our User Experience through deep analytics and Machine Learning.
• Ability to balance speed and quality - based on the task at hand, you strike a balance between working efficiently and writing quality code. 
• Proactive and continuous communication - Given a problem, you collaborate with others and keep everyone in the loop along the way.
• Being open to thinking differently - Some designs need to be constrained within technical and/or architectural boundaries and other times designs need outside-the-box thinking! As a Senior Engineer, you are able to understand what a given situation calls for and support designs on both ends of this spectrum.
• In terms of specific technologies, we would expect you to have experience in most of the following (we have indicated our expectations of your skill level in each as one of the following: F- Familiar / I - Intermediate / E- Expert):
  • Python / sci-kit-learn / Pandas (E)
  • SQL (E)
  • BigQuery, Google Data Studio, GCP (F)
  • Tensor flow and/or PyTorch (F)
  • SW End techniques (CI/test driven development/etc) (I)
• Technical areas and tools that are “Nice to have”: 
  • PHP / Laravel
  • ChatGPT or other Genertaive AI / Large Labguage Model technologies
  • d

Viamo is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity and encourage applications from all candidates. We believe that diverse perspectives help our teams to create innovative solutions and understand our global clients' needs. In alignment with our values, we are committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse global workforce without discrimination. 

Apply now with a CV and a short cover letter. We're excited to work with you on this mission ahead.