Wiser Solutions is looking for a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to shape and execute our AI and data science strategy. In this senior technical leadership role, you will be the technical authority for AI, defining architectural direction and delivering production systems that translate capabilities into customer value. We are building an AI-native engineering culture where AI tools are woven into how we work, enabling brands and retailers to gather intelligence and automate actions.
What You'll Do
- Define and evolve Wiser's AI and data science technical strategy in partnership with product and business leadership.
- Represent Wiser's AI capabilities to customers, partners, and advisors—articulating approach, roadmap, and differentiation.
- Identify high-impact opportunities where AI can solve customer problems or create competitive advantage.
- Establish technical standards, patterns, and best practices that influence engineering decisions across the organization.
- Architect and build production AI systems including LLM applications, RAG pipelines, semantic search, and traditional ML models.
- Design rigorous evaluation frameworks, experimentation methodologies, and monitoring systems for reliable, measurable results.
- Bridge classical data science approaches with modern generative AI techniques.
- Own technical quality for AI systems end-to-end: from data pipelines through model deployment to production observability.
- Partner with product management to translate business requirements into technical approaches and validate solutions.
- Mentor and elevate the AI/data science team (3-5 engineers), raising the technical bar through code review and guidance.
- Collaborate across engineering teams to integrate AI capabilities into Wiser's broader platform architecture.
- Drive build-vs-buy decisions and vendor evaluations for AI infrastructure and tooling.
- Champion AI-native development practices across Wiser engineering—demonstrating how AI tools accelerate development.
- Help build an engineering culture where AI augmentation is the default, not the exception.
What We're Looking For
- 15+ years of experience in data science, machine learning, or ML engineering, with progression into technical leadership.
- Deep expertise in statistical methods, experimental design, and classical ML (not just LLM integration).
- Proven ability to architect and deliver production ML/AI systems at scale on cloud platforms (AWS strongly preferred).
- Strong software engineering fundamentals: write production-quality code, not just notebooks.
- Track record of organization-wide technical influence—setting standards, driving architectural decisions, mentoring engineers.
- Experience communicating technical strategy and capabilities to non-technical stakeholders, including customers and executives.
- Demonstrated ability to operate autonomously, identify high-impact problems, and drive initiatives without close direction.
- Active, daily use of AI coding assistants and a demonstrated belief that AI fundamentally changes how software gets built.
Nice to Have
- Experience with transformer architectures, fine-tuning, or training custom models.
- Background in retail, e-commerce, or product data domains.
- Familiarity with LLM orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex) and vector databases.
- Track record of introducing AI-augmented workflows to teams or organizations.
- Opinions (and evidence) on how AI changes engineering practices, team structures, or development processes.
Technical Stack
- NLP and text analytics: embeddings, semantic similarity, classification, entity extraction, information retrieval.
- LLM integration patterns: prompt engineering, RAG architectures, agent frameworks, evaluation methods.
- Data engineering: pipeline design, data quality, feature stores, large-scale datasets.
- MLOps: model deployment, monitoring, A/B testing infrastructure, production observability.
- Python ecosystem mastery, SQL fluency, distributed systems concepts.
- AWS.
Team & Environment
You will provide technical leadership for our AI/data science team of 3-5 engineers, mentoring and elevating their skills. The role involves close collaboration across engineering teams to integrate AI into the broader platform.
Benefits & Compensation
- Base annual salary range: $155,000 to $170,000 USD.
- Equity participation.
Work Mode
This is a remote position open to candidates anywhere in Canada, with a preference for eastern or central time zones.
Wiser Solutions, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibits Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation of any kind. All employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications.
