Why You'll Love This Role: 

We're looking for an experienced ML Ops Engineer to join the ML/AI team at Newsela. This team works on projects ranging from classical Machine Learning to AI / Generative pipelines.  This is a hands-on role. You'll work closely with ML/AI, data and site reliability engineers to take models from prototype to production, build robust data pipelines, and keep our services running smoothly as we continue to scale.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines for ML model training, packaging, and deployment across our microservices.
• Manage containerized services on AWS ECS, optimizing for cost, latency, and availability.
• Automate infrastructure provisioning and service configuration with Terraform.
• Work to maintain and scale services that make use of third party LLM providers.
• Build and improve data pipelines that feed models from BigQuery, S3, and DynamoDB into training and inference workflows.
• Instrument services with observability tooling (Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Langfuse) and establish SLOs for model-serving endpoints.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to productionize new models using BentoML, FastAPI, and container-based serving.

About You:

• 2-3 years in ML Ops supporting ML/AI features, systems and workflows with 3-4 years prior experience in DevOps, CloudOps or SRE.
• Strong proficiency in Python.
• Hands-on experience with Docker containerization and container orchestration.
• Solid understanding of CI/CD for ML workflows in an enterprise production environment.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code, preferably Terraform.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms — specifically AWS (ECS, ECR, S3, DynamoDB, CloudWatch) and GCP (BigQuery, Vertex AI).
• Experience with LLM integration and observability (OpenAI API, Google GenAI, Langfuse tracing).
• Experience building and maintaining data pipelines for ML training and feature engineering
• Familiarity with ML modeling workflows — training, evaluation, experiment tracking (e.g. MLFlow, Weights & Biases), and model versioning
• Experience monitoring and flagging model drift over time.
• Exposure to NLP/NLU models and frameworks such as Hugging Face Transformers, spaCy, or sentence-transformers
• Knowledge of vector databases (LanceDB, FAISS) and embedding-based retrieval systems
• Experience with scaling and maintaining deep learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) in production settings
• Familiarity with classical ML libraries (scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM) and model explainability tools (SHAP)
• Working knowledge of ML serving frameworks such as BentoML or similar.
• Comfort working with FastAPI or similar async Python web frameworks.

Please note that given the nature of the contract, this role will not be eligible to participate in company-sponsored benefits

About Newsela:

Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. We deliver integrated, AI-powered solutions designed to unlock student engagement, empower teachers, and drive meaningful learning outcomes. Our suite of products supports knowledge and skill development, writing practice, daily instruction, assessment, and data-informed decision-making across K–12 classrooms. Grounded in learning science research, Newsela’s solutions integrate content, assessment, and analytics to help educators track progress, understand student outcomes, and deliver high-impact instruction that supports every learner.

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About the Role

The Revenue Cycle Management team is seeking a Staff Backend Software Engineer to play a key role in modernizing our billing platform. This position will focus on designing and implementing architectural solutions for performant, scalable systems that can evolve with our growing business needs. You will lead efforts in cloud integration, ensuring seamless connectivity and monitoring of cloud services, with an emphasis on microservices and target state architectural patterns.

In this role, you will drive code reviews, offering feedback and recommendations to improve the quality and maintainability of our codebase. Your expertise in cloud technologies will be critical as you collaborate with teams to integrate cloud solutions, optimize performance, and establish monitoring practices. You will have the opportunity to shape the future of our billing platform by crafting solutions that are both cutting-edge and aligned with best practices for scalability, security, and reliability.

Your Area of Focus

• Lead Software Development: Design, develop, test, and deploy scalable and maintainable software applications using Spring Boot, Java, React, and cloud technologies.
• Architect and Design: Collaborate with product managers, designers, and cross-functional teams to architect robust and scalable solutions that meet business requirements. Provide input into the technical direction of the team and product.
• Cloud Technology Expertise: Leverage experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) to design cloud-native applications. Ensure that applications are optimized for scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency in a cloud environment.
• Code Reviews & Mentorship: Conduct thorough code reviews, ensuring that the team adheres to best practices for clean, maintainable, and efficient code. Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
• Collaboration and Communication: Work closely with product and design teams to define requirements, deliver timely solutions, and provide technical expertise throughout the product lifecycle.
• Performance and Optimization: Monitor and optimize the performance of applications. Identify bottlenecks and implement performance improvements across both frontend (React) and backend (Java/Spring Boot) layers.
• Agile Development: Participate in Agile development processes, including sprint planning, daily standups, retrospectives, and backlog grooming. Contribute to defining and prioritizing work within the team.
• Stay Current: Continuously research and apply emerging technologies and industry best practices to improve the development process and product quality.

Your Professional Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of professional software engineering experience with a strong track record of delivering complex software solutions.
• Strong expertise in Java and Spring Boot for building scalable and secure backend systems.
• Experience with building RESTful APIs and microservices architectures.
• Hands-on experience with React and frontend web technologies.
• Experience with modern front-end workflows and state management
• Practical experience with one or more cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Familiarity with cloud-native technologies (e.g., containers, serverless, CI/CD pipelines).
• Strong Understanding of Software Design Patterns: Experience in object-oriented design principles, microservices architectures, and cloud-native application design.
• CI/CD & DevOps Practices: Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and deployment practices. Familiarity with tools such as Jenkins, Harness, Docker, Kubernetes, or similar.
• Database Expertise: Strong experience with both relational and NoSQL databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB) and an understanding of database design and optimization.
• AI Expertise: Demonstrating usage of AI tools supports your daily work when doing research, debug, coding and deployment of new solutions.

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