Principal Machine Learning Engineer at Vail Resorts in Hybrid, Remote, US

Job description

• We are looking for a curious, driven, innovative machine learning engineer who takes initiative to solve problems and create environments that accelerate the development, deployment, and usage of data science models and AI to drive greater organizational impact.
• The Data Science & Data Engineering team within the Enterprise Analytics organization builds data assets, predictive models, analytical applications, and platforms across the organization. Our team collaborates with business stakeholders, analysts, and technology teams to tackle high-impact use cases with state-of-the-art models and tools to grow the business, streamline costs, and improve guest experiences.

Responsibilities

• Productionize ML models developed by data science into reliable, monitored, maintainable systems.
• Build model data foundations that ensure training, inference, monitoring, and analytics data are trustworthy and scalable.
• Architect ML platform patterns in Databricks that bring reliability, consistency, governance, performance, and cost discipline to ML and data workflows.
• Identify and scope opportunities for ML engineering across the business for high-impact.
• Develop reusable tools, libraries, standards, documentation, and production-readiness practices to enable data science and data engineering teams.
• Develop analytical and model-powered applications that turn data and ML outputs into usable business workflows for end users.
• Prepare the platform for future AI engineering, including LLM and agent-based systems, as the organization matures.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring across engineering, architecture, and development including design and code reviews.

Requirements

• Quantitative Foundation: B.S. degree in a quantitative field (e.g., Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, Operations Research, Engineering).
• Software Engineering Fundamentals: write clean, modular, testable, maintainable code and understand how to structure production-grade systems rather than one-off notebooks or scripts.
• Python and SQL Proficiency: strong in Python and SQL for building data pipelines, automation, model integrations, analytical workflows, and production services.
• Data Modeling and Pipeline Design: understand how to design reliable, well-structured data assets, including curated tables, feature datasets, batch pipelines, orchestration, data quality checks, and lineage.
• ML Lifecycle Fluency: understand the full model lifecycle: data collection, exploration, model development, validation, deployment, monitoring, retraining, and retirement.
• Production ML Patterns: understand core MLOps patterns such as model registries, feature/data versioning, reproducible environments, testing/validation, monitoring, and rollback.
• Cloud and Platform Engineering: You are comfortable working in cloud-based data and ML environments and understand the foundations of permissions, environments, jobs, services, storage, networking, and cost-aware architecture.
• Databricks Expertise: You’re familiar and experienced with the core parts of Spark, Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Databricks Workflows, MLflow, model registry patterns, job/cluster optimization, and governance.
• DevOps Practices: You use modern engineering practices such as Git, CI/CD, automated testing, code review, dependency management, environment management, and observability.
• Application Development: You can build applications, APIs, dashboards, or workflow tools that sit on top of data and model outputs.
• System Design: You can reason through tradeoffs across reliability, latency, scale, cost, governance, maintainability, and ease of use.
• Curious: bring intellectual curiosity, an inquisitive nature, and a desire to deepen your knowledge and continue learning.
• Ownership: take responsibility to proactively advance projects, contribute to the organization, and develop the best solutions.
• Communication: explain technical concepts, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Collaboration: work effectively cross-functionally with data scientists, data engineers, analysts, application engineers, product partners, and business stakeholders.
• Pragmatism: You know how to balance ideal architecture with business urgency, team maturity, operational constraints, and the need to ship.
• A graduate degree (Masters or PhD) in a quantitative field
• Experience with dbt (Core) for modular data modeling, including testing, documentation, and dependency management
• Experience with AI engineer to use, build, and monitor agentic solutions

Skills

Required

• Python
• SQL
• Databricks
• Spark
• Unity Catalog
• Delta Lake
• Databricks Workflows
• MLflow
• Git
• CI/CD
• Automated testing
• Code review

Preferred

• dbt (Core)
• AI engineering
• Agentic solutions

Benefits

• Ski/Mountain Perks! Free passes for employees, employee discounted lift tickets for friends and family AND free ski lessons
• MORE employee discounts on lodging, food, gear, and mountain shuttles
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Employee Assistance Program
• Excellent training and professional development
• Health Insurance; Medical Insurance, Dental Insurance, and Vision Insurance plans (for eligible seasonal employees after working 500 hours)
• Free ski passes for dependents
• Critical Illness and Accident plans
• Employees can work remotely from British Columbia, Washington D.C., and the 16 U.S. states* in which we currently operate. This includes: California, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Washington State, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
• Please note that the ability to work in person or off-site, and the particulars related to such work, are subject to change at any time; and, accordingly, the Company reserves the right to change its policies and/or require in-person/in-office work or off-site work at any time in its sole discretion.
• The expected Total Compensation for this role is $140,000 - $185,000 + Annual Bonus. Individual compensation decisions are based on a variety of factors.