Opinion
What is a Machine Learning Engineer?
Attempting to understand an ambiguously defined role in the AI/ML industry
I am a principal machine learning (ML) engineer at a Fortune 50 company, and one of the questions that I am asked most often is the same one posed in the title of this post: “What is an ML engineer?” The truth is that there doesn’t seem to be a one-size-fits-all answer. While I am definitely not actively looking for a new role, I actually enjoy looking at job postings from other companies just to get a feel of what other companies are looking for in terms of skillsets for ML engineers. The reality is that when it comes to roles like data scientists, ML engineers, and even some kinds of software engineers, there is a lot of overlap in terms of what is expected of skillsets. Company A might define the role of an ML engineer the exact same way that Company B defines a data scientist role, with each of these roles performing the exact same activities despite the differences in title. These definitions really do range quite a bit!
That said, I’m not going to try to nail down a very precise definition of an ML engineer. (Because I’m sure I’d make somebody mad if I tried to do that!) Instead, I think a more useful examination would be an understanding of the skillsets generally associated to ML engineers. After analyzing those skillsets, we’ll specifically juxtapose the skillsets of a general ML engineer with a general data scientist, specifically since one of the questions I hear most often is, “What is the difference between a data scientist and an ML engineer?” Finally, we’ll wrap things up with an analysis on the direction I expect the industry head so that you can best prepare yourself for the future.
Primary Skillsets of an ML Engineer
Though it is difficult to nail down a precise definition of an ML engineer, we do at least see enough commonality in skillsets that we can broadly group them into three collective categories: machine learning / deep learning, software engineering, and technical architecture. Below we’ll analyze more closely what each of these three categories entail. Before moving forward, I do want to address one skillset you might notice curiously missing from the list: data engineering…