Applied ML Manager

Speak • San Francisco, CA

1d

About The Position

We’re looking for an ML Manager to lead our ML team (currently 4 people across voice ML and broader ML systems) and raise the bar on execution, measurement, and strategy.
This is a hands-on manager role: you’ll be the line manager for the team, partner closely with Andrew to set direction and ambition, and help us consistently ship ML improvements that move product metrics. You’ll also help us expand and pressure test our strategy as new modeling approaches emerge (for example, speech-to-speech), while keeping the team focused on high-impact bets.

Requirements

• 8–10+ years overall experience in applied ML, with a track record of shipping ML and LLM systems into production.
• 4+ years people management experience, including leading 1:1s, giving feedback, and handling performance.
• Strong technical judgment in applied ML (not primarily ML infra/MLOps), including ability to define and run rigorous evaluations.
• Excellent metric sense and analytical thinking: can translate ambiguous goals into measurable outcomes and make tradeoffs.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills with Product, Engineering, and Design.
• Clear written communication: can write crisp strategy docs, decision memos, and goal docs.

Nice To Haves

• speech/audio, linguistics, or multimodal experience.

Responsibilities

• Manage and grow the ML team through clear expectations, regular feedback, and strong coaching.
• Define quarterly ML goals and success metrics, establish baselines, and build a visible “scoreboard” for progress.
• Drive end-to-end execution on key ML initiatives: planning, evaluation, iteration, rollout, and impact measurement.
• Build a repeatable model evaluation and experimentation process (quality, performance, reliability), including rollout criteria.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leaders to align roadmaps, clarify ownership, and ensure ML work is shippable and predictable.
• Identify gaps in our current ML strategy, propose concrete bets, and translate direction into actionable plans.
• Help hire thoughtfully as the team grows, without prematurely scaling into a large org.

Benefits

• Join a fantastic, tight-knit team at the right time: we're growing very quickly, we've most recently raised our Series C from some of the top investors in the valley, and we've achieved product-market fit in our initial markets. You'd join at a magical time when a single person could significantly change the course of the company.
• Do your life's work with people you’ll love working with: we care strongly about our craft and want every person at Speak to feel like they're growing every day. We believe in the idea that working with people you both enjoy and have respect for makes everything better. We hire thoughtfully and only work with people we admire deeply.
• Global in nature: We're live in over 40 countries and launching in a number of new markets soon. We have dedicated offices in San Francisco, Ljubljana, Seoul, and Tokyo, and you’ll have the opportunity to talk to users in each of these regions on a regular basis as well as travel.
• Impact people's lives in a major way: Learning a language is one of the single most life-changing skills one can learn, and right now 99% of people never achieve their goal because the process is broken. We’re helping millions of people achieve their goals and improve their lives.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed