--- title: 'Senior Machine Learning Engineer (all genders) - Babbel Labs at Babbel' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-all-genders-babbel-labs-babbel-berlin-4taqs6m136xc' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-15' --- # Senior Machine Learning Engineer (all genders) - Babbel Labs at Babbel - **Company:** Babbel - **Location:** Berlin, Germany - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-09-10 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-15 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/babbel/a0d0942c-da48-4cfe-a8ba-143129b00695 ## Job description Senior Machine Learning Engineer (all genders) - Babbel Labs ## About Babbel Labs Babbel Labs is building the future of language learning. We are an AI-first, independent company within the Babbel group, based in Berlin. Our teams bring AI, research and product together to ship experiences that set a new standard for how people learn. ## The role Babbel's learner-personalisation engine tracks what a learner has and hasn't mastered, and decides what they should practice next. We are actively pushing personalisation further; moving beyond describing a user and prescribing targeted practice, to adapting the learning journey ahead of them. This is a hands-on senior individual-contributor role on that team. You will own real subsystems end to end and make decisions about how to improve the personalisation engine. That includes everything from research and benchmarking through production, monitoring and incidents that follow six months later. ## How you'll make an impact - Work directly with the Principal Scientist to take designs from spec into production, then keep improving what you’ve built on your own judgement rather than waiting to be told what’s next. - Help shape new features from the beginning - not just implementation of a spec handed to you. - Take real ownership of core personalisation and mastery-tracking subsystems, operate independently, and make decisions confidently and competently. - Design the evaluation that tells you whether a change is real: a rigorous offline benchmark against a real baseline, and the online experiment that confirms or kills it. - Run what you build. Instrument it, notice when it's silently wrong rather than only when it errors, and fix it before it becomes an incident. - Deliver with coding agents as a matter of course, and verify what they produce before you rely on it. ## Your skills and qualifications - Strong, hands-on ML engineering that has shipped real models to production — recommendation, ranking, scoring, or trust-and-safety systems under real user load are the closest match. Research or competition experience is a plus. - Experience with probabilistic modeling, latent-variable modeling and Bayesian inference, or the equivalent rigor from an adjacent domain. - ML system evaluation: monitoring metrics you define, debugging output that doesn’t look right, and rolling out a change to a live scoring or ranking system without breaking it. - Rigorous experimentation practice: benchmarking against a real baseline, running or reading A/B tests correctly, and the judgement to know when an offline improvement won't survive contact with production. - TypeScript/Python as your primary languages, with enough command of our surrounding stack (AWS, Terraform, CI/CD) to ship and own your own service's delivery. This is not an infrastructure role, so depth there is not the bar. - Coding agents are part of your daily workflow, and you check their output before you rely on it. You are neither dismissive of them nor careless with them. ## Nice to have - Experience with psychometric models, such as Item Response Theory. - Graph ML experience — embeddings, graph neural networks, or relational modeling — at real scale. - Public technical work: open-source contributions, writing, or competitive ML. Ways of working This is a hands-on individual-contributor role on a small team that moves fast, agent-first, but with a disciplined delivery approach. It is remote and Berlin-friendly. The interview process is deliberately short: an initial screen, followed by one structured working session with the hiring manager. Diversity at Babbel As part of our ongoing journey towards building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company, we welcome everyone to apply, especially individuals who are underrepresented in tech. We are a learning company, inside and out, and we encourage you to apply even if you do not fit all the technical requirements — all candidates are assessed based on skills, qualifications, and our business needs. Please state your pronouns in your application, and let us know if you'd like to be addressed by a name other than the one appearing on your official documents. If you have a disability or special need, feel welcome to inform us so we can provide proper assistance in the application process. ## About Babbel ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Babbel is a subscription-based language learning platform that offers self-paced lessons, live classes, and AI-powered conversation practice across 14 languages. - **Entity Type**: Private (Privately Held) - **Headquarters**: Berlin, Germany (with an office in New York City, USA) - **Founded**: 2007 - **Founders**: Thomas Holl, Markus Witte, Lorenz Heine, Toine Diepstraten ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: E-Learning / Language Education - **Target customers**: B2C (individual learners) and B2B (Babbel for Business for corporate training) - **Mission or purpose statement**: “Creating mutual understanding through language” ## Products & Services - **[Babbel App](https://www.babbel.com/)**: Award-winning self-study app with over 60,000 lessons in 14 languages. Includes speech recognition, interactive dialogues, and progress tracking. - **[Babbel Live](https://www.babbel.com/live)**: Instructor-led live group classes for real-time conversation practice. - **[Babbel Speak](https://www.babbel.com/speak)**: AI-powered conversation partner that guides users through realistic scenarios without pressure. - **[Babbel for Business](https://www.babbel.com/business)**: Corporate language training solution for teams and enterprises. - **[Babbel Podcasts & Magazine](https://www.babbel.com/magazine)**: Free cultural and language‑learning content, including podcasts and articles. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company) - **Key Metric**: Over 25 million subscriptions sold; 1,299 total employees (per Built In) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not disclosed in sources consulted - **Growth Signals**: - Named to GSV 150 list of most transformational digital learning companies (2025) - Fast Company’s Most Innovative Language Learning Company (2023) - 92% of users improved proficiency in 2 months (internal study) - Proven effectiveness studies with Yale University, City University of New York, and Michigan State University - Employee base of 1,000+ representing 80+ nationalities ## Competitive Advantages - **Content moat**: All lessons created in‑house by 200+ linguists, ensuring high quality and pedagogical rigor. - **Proven methodology**: Backed by academic studies showing real‑world speaking confidence. - **AI integration**: Babbel Speak offers stress‑free, AI‑driven conversation practice, blending technology with human expertise. - **First‑mover**: Pioneered online language learning in 2007 and remains one of the most recognized brands in the space. ## Strategic Focus - Expanding AI capabilities (Babbel Speak) to personalize and accelerate learning. - Growing B2B segment (Babbel for Business) and live class offerings. - Deepening content library across 14 languages and all proficiency levels. - Maintaining leadership in digital learning innovation (consistent awards and recognitions). ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Diverse, international team (80+ nationalities) based in Berlin and New York. Emphasis on mutual understanding and inclusion. - **Work policy**: On‑site presence expected (offices in Berlin and NYC); not fully remote. - **Employee ratings**: 3.5/5 on LinkedIn (Work‑Life: 4.4, Culture: 3.8, Compensation: 3.0, Career: 3.3). - **Notable perks**: Opportunity to work on a mission‑driven product used by millions; access to language learning resources; modern offices in central locations. ## Sources 1. [Babbel Careers](https://jobs.babbel.com/en) 2. [Babbel About Us](https://www.babbel.com/about-us) 3. [Babbel LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/babbel-com) 4. [Built In Babbel Profile](https://builtin.com/company/babbel) 5. [Babbel Homepage](https://www.babbel.com/) ## Other roles at Babbel - [Senior Product Manager – Learning Experience (all genders)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-manager-learning-experience-all-genders-babbel-berlin-y9wn4ewhsx0m) — Berlin, Germany - [Senior Manager, CRM Revenue Expansion](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-crm-revenue-expansion-babbel-new-york-59fd5czvq3vx) — New York, NY - [Senior iOS Engineer – Learning Experience (all genders)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ios-engineer-learning-experience-all-genders-babbel-berlin-b2cww7waxf1k) — Berlin, Germany - [Senior Principal Engineer – AI Content Systems (all genders)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-principal-engineer-ai-content-systems-all-genders-babbel-berlin-zdb6gfhremsh) — Berlin, Germany