--- title: 'Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Policy & Safety at Spotify' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-policy-safety-spotify-new-york-8fj70bwgs9sr' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-17' --- # Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Policy & Safety at Spotify - **Company:** Spotify - **Location:** New York, NY - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-05-04 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-17 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/spotify/9eca14d3-8e0b-46de-8161-704e07f3d9d0 ## Job description We design Spotify’s consumer experience—end to end, moment to moment, across every screen, platform, and partner integration. Our mission is to make listening feel effortless, personal, and joyful for billions of users around the world. That means turning complexity into clarity across hundreds of touchpoints—from our mobile and desktop apps to the smart speakers, TVs, cars, and integrations where Spotify shows up every day. If it touches a consumer, we shape it. We bring deep insight into human behavior, design, and technology to craft experiences that feel intuitive, expressive, and unmistakably Spotify. The Policy & Safety team sits within Content Platform in the Experience Mission, building the systems that keep Spotify safe, compliant, and trusted by millions of users and creators. This team owns Spotify’s content moderation infrastructure — from detection models to policy enforcement systems and compliance data pipelines. Working at the intersection of machine learning, platform engineering, and regulatory compliance, the team partners closely with Trust & Safety, Legal, and Public Affairs. They’re on the critical path for every new content type and social feature — including messaging, comments, and collaborative experiences — ensuring safety is built in from day one. With a strong focus on “safety by default,” the team is investing in large-scale rearchitecture and ML-driven systems to proactively protect users and empower safer interactions across the platform. ## What You'll Do - Design, build, and ship production-grade machine learning systems that power content safety and policy enforcement at Spotify scale - Own and lead key technical initiatives across detection, classification, and policy evaluation systems - Develop and maintain ML models for content moderation, including multimodal and LLM-based systems - Build robust evaluation frameworks, including standardized datasets, offline and online metrics, and continuous improvement loops - Drive experimentation to improve model performance, reliability, and fairness in safety-critical systems - Collaborate closely with cross-functional partners in Trust & Safety, Legal, and Public Affairs to align on policy and enforcement needs - Provide technical leadership within the team, mentoring engineers and contributing to ML strategy and prioritization - Represent technical decisions and trade-offs in stakeholder discussions and influence product direction ## Who You Are - You have solid experience building and deploying machine learning systems in production environments at scale - You are experienced with training, evaluating, and maintaining ML models using modern frameworks such as PyTorch - You have a deep understanding of machine learning evaluation, including dataset design, metrics, and continuous improvement systems - You know how to design systems that balance performance, reliability, and real-world impact in high-stakes domains - You care about building safe, responsible, and user-centric ML systems - You are comfortable working across disciplines, partnering with legal, policy, and product stakeholders - You have experience leading technical projects and influencing direction within a team or product area - You have experience with distributed systems or backend technologies (e.g., Scala) Where You'll Be - This role is based in New York - We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home. The United States base range for this position is $184,050 - $262,928 USD, plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six-month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, paid flexible holidays, and paid sick leave. These ranges may be modified in the future. ## About Spotify ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Spotify is the world's most popular audio streaming subscription service, connecting users to over 100 million tracks, 7 million podcast titles, and 700,000 audiobooks across 184 markets. - **Entity Type**: Public (NYSE: SPOT) - **Headquarters**: Stockholm, Sweden - **Founded**: 2006 - **Founders**: Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon ## Core Business - Primary industry: Audio streaming and digital media - Target customers: B2C (consumers via Free and Premium tiers) and B2B (advertisers, artists, and labels through Spotify Advertising and Spotify for Artists) - Mission: "To deliver creativity to the world—one note, one voice, one idea at a time." ## Products & Services - **Spotify Free**: Ad-supported streaming of music, podcasts, and audiobooks - **Spotify Premium**: Subscription tier with offline mode, improved sound quality, and ad-free listening - **Spotify for Artists**: Analytics, promotion, and monetization tools for creators - **Spotify Advertising**: Programmatic and self-serve ad platform for brands - **Audiobooks**: Catalog of 700,000+ audiobook titles (market entry in 2022) ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed in available sources; stock price reported at USD 391.23 (as of 2024-10-29) - **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue EUR 17.2B; 777 million monthly users including 300 million subscribers (per Spotify Newsroom). Note: LinkedIn company data lists 365M users/165M subscribers — conflicting reports, likely reflecting an older snapshot. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Series A of USD 21.6M with 5 investors (2008); debt financing of USD 1.0B (2016); convertible notes in 2016 and 2021. Key acquisitions include Sonantic (2022), Mediachain (2017), and Tunigo (2013). - **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew +14.2% YoY to 8,921 employees; 9 offices across 4 countries; expansion into audiobooks; 300M+ paying subscribers. ## Competitive Advantages - Scale: largest audio streaming subscriber base globally - Data and AI personalization: mature recommendation engines and AI-driven discovery - Multi-format audio ecosystem: music, podcasts, and audiobooks in a single app - Strong brand recognition and deep creator relationships ## Strategic Focus - AI-powered personalization and generative audio tools - Audiobook market expansion - Podcast ecosystem growth - Creator monetization and artist tools ## Why Work Here - Employer rating 4.0/5.0 from 2,155 reviews (Work-Life: 4.2, Compensation: 3.9, Culture: 4.0, Career: 3.5) - **Work ## Other roles at Spotify - [Audiobook Licensing & Partnerships Manager - Japan](https://feeny.ai/job/audiobook-licensing-partnerships-manager-japan-spotify-tokyo-tbvmn3q122fh) — Tokyo, Japan - [Client Partner ANZ](https://feeny.ai/job/client-partner-anz-spotify-sydney-nznywxfyz9dv) — Sydney, Australia - [Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Personalization](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-personalization-spotify-new-york-bav7y8efdgts) — New York, NY - [Security Engineer - Enterprise Security](https://feeny.ai/job/security-engineer-enterprise-security-spotify-london-jtdrrew708fh) — London, United Kingdom - [Senior Product Manager, Consumer - Audiobooks](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-manager-consumer-audiobooks-spotify-new-york-gjbjtjktrqrz) — New York, NY - [Senior Product Manager, Consumer - Audiobooks](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-manager-consumer-audiobooks-spotify-london-1vk6k6yqy21g) — London, United Kingdom - [Global Creative Lead, Reverb](https://feeny.ai/job/global-creative-lead-reverb-spotify-new-york-j1bjk0d56cmz) — New York, NY - [Art Director - Mexico](https://feeny.ai/job/art-director-mexico-spotify-mexico-city-tz51cjcxsx5y) — Mexico City, Mexico - [Senior Program Analyst - GTM Ops](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-program-analyst-gtm-ops-spotify-new-york-vacgfykge7we) — New York, NY - [Client Partner, Emerging & Scaled](https://feeny.ai/job/client-partner-emerging-scaled-spotify-sao-paulo-fsj1pekbxs0z) — São Paulo, Brazil