Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Document AI Data (Tech Lead Manager)

Join ABBYY and be part of a team that celebrates your unique work style. With flexible work options, a supportive team, and rewards that reflect your value, you can focus on what matters most – driving your growth, while fueling ours.

Our commitment to respect, transparency, and simplicity means you can trust us to always choose to do the right thing.

As a trusted partner for purpose-built AI and intelligent automation, we solve highly complex problems for our enterprise customers and put their information to work to transform the way they do business. Over 10,000 customers trust ABBYY, including many Fortune 500 ones. You will work on further developing a portfolio already containing client names such as DHL, Johnson & Johnson, FDA, DMV, PwC, KeyBank, Spotify, and H&R BLOCK.

About the Role

We are seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer (Tech Lead Manager) to lead ABBYY’s Document AI Data team, one of the company’s most strategic and high-impact engineering groups.

This role combines hands-on technical leadership with people management, owning both the architecture and roadmap for how ABBYY builds high-quality training data at scale, as well as the growth and performance of the team delivering it.

You will operate at the center of ABBYY’s document AI strategy—defining how training data is created, validated, and scaled to power next-generation large language and vision-language models.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Strategy

• Own the end-to-end technical strategy for the Document AI data platform, spanning:

• AI-assisted annotation

• Synthetic data generation

• Document understanding pipelines

• Define architectural principles that unify multiple data workflows into a scalable, cohesive platform

• Establish and operationalize standards for high-quality training data in collaboration with Modeling teams

• Drive the development of data quality evaluation frameworks, including metrics for coverage, fidelity, and performance

• Identify and evaluate emerging AI technologies to maintain ABBYY’s competitive edge

• Make hands-on technical contributions to critical architectural and pipeline decisions

Team & People Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of Senior Machine Learning Engineers

• Own hiring strategy and execution, including role definition, interview processes, and offer decisions

• Drive performance management, career development, and growth planning

• Foster a culture of technical rigor, curiosity, and collaboration

• Represent team priorities, roadmap, and resourcing needs to senior leadership

• Build strong partnerships with peer leaders across Modeling, Platform, and Data Operations teams

Cross-Functional Alignment & Delivery

• Partner with Platform teams on model hosting and inference requirements for large-scale data workflows

• Collaborate with Modeling teams to translate model training needs into data strategies and priorities

• Work with Data Operations to build feedback loops between automated annotation and human validation

• Own delivery accountability, including roadmap planning, milestone tracking, and escalation management
• Champion best practices for data privacy, compliance, and responsible AI across all data processes

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field

• 10+ years of experience in Machine Learning / AI, with focus on:

• Large Language Models (LLMs)

• Vision-Language Models (VLMs)

• Large-scale data systems

• Proven track record as both a technical leader and people manager

• Experience building and scaling AI-driven data pipelines in production
• Demonstrated success hiring and developing senior engineering talent

Technical Expertise

• Deep expertise in LLMs and VLMs, including prompting, fine-tuning, and evaluation for structured tasks

• Strong understanding of training data quality principles (distribution, diversity, and validation)

• Proven ability to architect large-scale data platforms processing millions of documents

• Strong programming skills in Python with experience in PyTorch or similar frameworks

• Experience with cloud platforms, MLOps tooling, and pipeline orchestration

• Familiarity with document AI systems, layout analysis, and real-world document variability

Leadership & Communication

• Proven ability to lead and inspire high-performing engineering teams

• Strong track record of making long-term architectural decisions

• Excellent cross-functional collaboration with Engineering, Product, and Operations

• Ability to translate complex technical tradeoffs into clear strategic direction

• Experience building teams in ambiguous, fast-scaling environments

Here are some of our local benefits:

• Comprehensive medical, accidental, and life insurance

• Weekly wellness sessions to support your physical and mental well-being

• A generous paid time off policy

Join ABBYY, and you will:

Love how you work

• We provide remote and hybrid working options to fit all lifestyles.
• We use flexible hours across most of our teams to allow you to find your own definition of balance.
• Encouraging a culture of giving, we provide two paid volunteering days off every year so you can take time to contribute to the causes you care about.
• To ensure your family is cared for, we offer paid parental leave in all our locations.

Love whom you work with

• We are a global team of 600+ colleagues, spread across 15 countries on four continents.
• With colleagues representing 30+ nationalities, our workforce reflects the world.
• Innovation and excellence run through our veins. Our teams gather the expertise which has garnered ABBYY more than 140 technology patents.
• We are guided by the values of respect, transparency, and simplicity.
• "Team Environment" is in the top three highest-scoring drivers of engagement across all of our departments.

Love what you work on

• We are a company with more than 35 years of experience in the technology market;
• Over 10,000 customers trust ABBYY, including many Fortune 500 ones, with names such as DHL, Johnson & Johnson, FDA, DMV, PwC, KeyBank, Spotify, and H&R BLOCK;
• We have modernized the capture market by creating the first low-code/no-code IDP platform.
• Our Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision Technologies, and a marketplace built with AI, can transform any document in any process;
• Top Analyst firms recognize ABBYY's market leadership, including Gartner, Everest PEAK Matrix ® Assessment, ISG Intelligent Automation Lens, and NelsonHall, amongst others.

ABBYY is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer that values the strength that diversity brings to the workplace. To learn more about our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion, check out the careers section on our website.