What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Engineer - ML position at turing?
About Turing
Based in San Francisco, California, Turing is the world’s leading research accelerator for frontier AI labs and a trusted partner for global enterprises looking to deploy advanced AI systems. Turing accelerates frontier research with high-quality data, specialized talent, and training pipelines that advance thinking, reasoning, coding, multimodality, and STEM. For enterprises, Turing builds proprietary intelligence systems that integrate AI into mission-critical workflows, unlock transformative outcomes, and drive lasting competitive advantage.
Recognized by Forbes, The Information, and Fast Company among the world’s top innovators, Turing’s leadership team includes AI technologists from Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, McKinsey, Bain, Stanford, Caltech, and MIT. Learn more at www.turing.com
Role Overview
Turing is seeking a hands-on Machine Learning Senior Staff Engineer to lead cross-functional teams building and deploying cutting-edge LLM and ML systems. In this role, you’ll drive the full lifecycle of AI development — from research and large-scale model training to production deployment — while mentoring top engineers and collaborating closely with research and infrastructure leaders.
You’ll combine technical depth in deep learning and MLOps with leadership in execution and strategy, ensuring that Turing’s AI initiatives deliver reliable, high-performance systems that translate research breakthroughs into measurable business impact.
This position is ideal for leaders who are still comfortable coding, optimizing large-scale training pipelines, building collab notebooks that break the models and navigating the intersection of research, engineering, and product delivery.
Roles & Responsibilities
- Lead and mentor a cross-functional team of ML engineers, data scientists, and MLOps professionals.
- Oversee the full lifecycle of LLM and ML projects — from data collection to training, evaluation, and deployment.
- Collaborate with Research, Product, and Infrastructure teams to define goals, milestones, and success metrics.
- Provide technical direction on large-scale model training, fine-tuning, and distributed systems design.
- Implement best practices in MLOps, model governance, experiment tracking, and CI/CD for ML.
- Manage compute resources, budgets, and ensure compliance with data security and responsible AI standards.
- Communicate progress, risks, and results to stakeholders and executives effectively.
- Overlap of 6 hours with PST time zone is mandatory.
Required Skills & Qualifications
- Strong background in Machine Learning, NLP, and modern deep learning architectures (Transformers, LLMs).
- Hands-on experience with frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, or DeepSpeed
- Hands-on experience in Docker for Production deployment.
- Proven experience managing teams delivering ML/LLM models in production environments.
- Knowledge of distributed training, GPU/TPU optimization, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
- Familiarity with MLOps tools like MLflow, Kubeflow, or Vertex AI for scalable ML pipelines.
- Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
- Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (PhD preferred).
Nice to Have
- Experience building Agentic applications
- Experience training or fine-tuning foundation models.
- Contributions to open-source ML or LLM frameworks.
- Understanding of Responsible AI, bias mitigation, and model interpretability.
- Perks of Freelancing With Turing:
- Work in a fully remote environment
- Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI projects with leading LLM companies
Values:
- We are client first: We put our clients at the center of everything we do, because their success is the ultimate measure of our value.
- We work at Start-Up Speed: We move fast, stay agile and favor action because momentum is the foundation of perfection
- We are Al forward: We help our clients build the future of Al and implement it in our own roles and workflow to amplify productivity.
Advantages of joining Turing:
- Amazing work culture (Super collaborative & supportive work environment; 5 days a week)
- Awesome colleagues (Surround yourself with top talent from Meta, Google, LinkedIn etc. as well as people with deep startup experience)
- Competitive compensation
- Flexible working hours
Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. Turing is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, protected veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristics. At Turing we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace and celebrate authenticity, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
For applicants from the European Union, please review Turing's GDPR notice here.