Senior MLOps Engineer

Role Overview

Senior MLOps Engineer at The Institute of Foundation Models (IFM), a dedicated research lab for building, understanding, deploying, and risk-managing large-scale AI systems.

Company Overview

The Institute of Foundation Models is a research lab that drives innovation in foundation models and their operationalization, empowering research, education, and industry adoption through scalable infrastructure and real-world applications. As part of the engineering team, you will operate at the intersection of machine learning and systems design, building the cloud, orchestration, and deployment layers that power the next generation of intelligent applications at MBZUAI. You will work alongside world-class AI researchers and engineers to productionize LLMs, voice models, and multimodal systems at scale.

Role Purpose

Design, build, and maintain robust ML infrastructure across training, inference, and deployment pipelines. Take ownership of the model lifecycle from data ingestion to real-time serving, and ensure LLM and speech models are deployed efficiently, securely, and reproducibly in Kubernetes-based environments.

Key Responsibilities

Infrastructure & Deployment

• Design and build cloud, orchestration, and deployment layers for large-scale AI systems.
• Maintain ML infrastructure across training, inference, and deployment pipelines.
• Deploy LLM and speech models efficiently, securely, and reproducibly in Kubernetes-based environments.

Model Lifecycle Management

• Own the model lifecycle from data ingestion to real-time serving.
• Operationalize LLMs, voice models, and multimodal systems at scale.

Skills & Competencies

• Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes (EKS).
• Helm.
• AWS cloud infrastructure.
• Modern MLOps toolchains including vLLM, SGLang, OpenWebUI, Weights & Biases, and MLflow.
• Familiarity with speech and voice AI frameworks including ElevenLabs, Whisper, and RVC.