Senior Manager of AI/ML

Whisker•Auburn Hills, MI

11h•Onsite

About The Position

Whisker is redefining what it means to live with cats—designing intelligent systems that remove friction, elevate the everyday, and celebrate the quiet brilliance of feline companionship. Today, Litter-Robot leads the category. Tomorrow, an entire ecosystem that expands what’s possible for cats and the people who love them. We believe the future is feline. And we’re imagining that future today. We work onsite 4+ days a week, with our team based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and Juneau, Wisconsin. Our team of 600+ passionate pet people thrives on collaboration, innovation, and the occasional office cameo from a four-legged friend. What You’ll Do: The Senior Manager of AI/ML leads the AIRE team in building and deploying intelligent systems that power Whisker’s connected product ecosystem. This role defines and executes the AI strategy across pet recognition, behavioral modeling, predictive insights, and intelligent in-app experiences. Partnering closely with Software Engineering, Product, and Data teams, this leader ensures machine learning solutions are scalable, production-ready, and directly aligned to customer and business impact.

Requirements

MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related field and / or equivalent years of experience
8+ years of experience in AI/ML development
3+ years in technical leadership
Strong expertise in Python and modern ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, or equivalent)
Experience building and deploying ML models in production environments
Deep understanding of supervised, unsupervised, and deep learning methodologies
Experience with cloud-based ML infrastructure (AWS preferred)
Strong collaboration skills across software, product, and hardware teams
Proven ability to translate complex ML concepts into business and product impact
Maintains confidentiality of proprietary information
Ability to maintain a professional atmosphere in a fast-paced environment with numerous interactions and interruptions
A high degree of initiative, self-motivation, and ability to motivate others
Ability to establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with Team Members and colleagues
Comfortable with office pets (cats, dogs)

Responsibilities

Leads the design, development, and delivery of software solutions aligned with company strategy, ensuring quality, scalability, and on-time execution.
Manages engineering resources and budget effectively, balancing innovation with operational discipline
Defines and executes the MLCV roadmap aligned with product and business strategy
Identifies high-impact opportunities to apply machine learning and deep learning across our connected ecosystem
Balances experimentation with production-grade deployment and maintenance
Leads development of supervised and unsupervised learning systems, including behavioral modeling, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics
Drives innovation in pet recognition, sensor fusion, and intelligent in-app experiences
Ensures models move efficiently from research to production
Establishes scalable MLOps practices for model training, validation, deployment, and monitoring
Partners with backend and platform teams to ensure infrastructure supports ML workloads
Defines standards for model performance, explainability, and reliability
Works closely with data engineering and backend teams to ensure high-quality training datasets and feature pipelines
Champions responsible data usage and model integrity
Defines metrics that measure real-world AI impact
Recruits, mentors, and grows a high-performing AI/ML team
Fosters a culture of experimentation, rigor, and continuous learning
Develops future AI technical leaders within the organization
Establishes and upholds best practices for secure, scalable, and efficient software development
Partners cross-functionally with Product, Operations, and business leaders to translate requirements into impactful solutions
Drives adoption of modern technologies and architectural standards to maintain technical leadership
Leads incident response and critical issue resolution to minimize disruption and protect customer experience
Defines and monitors engineering KPIs to measure performance and drive ongoing improvement
Represents Engineering in executive forums, providing clear updates on progress, risks, and strategic opportunities
Will perform additional responsibilities as needed