Backend Team Lead (ML)

Mayflower is a technology company building highload products used by millions of people worldwide. Operating at the scale of one of the world's top-50 websites, we solve complex engineering challenges and create solutions that power real-time entertainment for a global audience. We are looking for a Backend Team Lead for our ML development team focused on building and delivering production-grade ML-powered applications. This role is not about research or experimentation. You will be responsible for turning ML models into reliable, scalable, user-facing services. You will work at the intersection of machine learning and backend engineering, owning the full lifecycle of ML-powered features — from integration to deployment and operation in production. Job Responsibilities - Design and build production ML services (APIs, microservices, real-time systems) - Lead and grow a team of backend engineers: plan work, mentor team members, conduct code reviews, provide technical guidance, and foster engineering excellence. - Drive architectural decisions and ensure the scalability, reliability, and maintainability of ML services. - Integrate ML models into user-facing applications - Ensure reliability, scalability, and performance of ML-powered systems - Define and implement best practices for serving, versioning, and monitoring models in production - Collaborate closely with: - ML engineers / data scientists (who develop models) - DevOps / MLOps team (who provide platform and infrastructure) - Own the delivery pipeline of ML features into production - Lead and mentor engineers working on ML-powered applications - Drive architectural decisions around low-latency and high-load systems - Identify bottlenecks between experimentation and production and eliminate them