Senior Data Scientist (AI Platform)

At Instructure, we believe in the power of people to grow and succeed throughout their lives. Our goal is to amplify that power by creating intuitive products that simplify learning and personal development, facilitate meaningful relationships, and inspire people to go further in their education and careers. We do this by giving smart, creative, passionate people opportunities to create awesome. And that's where you come in:

Our team builds AI-native capabilities, reusable AI systems, and shared infrastructure that power multiple products and workflows across the platform.

We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist, AI Platform to own the machine learning lifecycle that turns models into reliable, production-grade product capabilities. You will design and operate the inference services, deployment and orchestration pipelines, and evaluation and monitoring frameworks that AI features depend on, and you will set the MLOps standards the rest of the team builds on. You will work alongside our infrastructure owner, who owns the underlying cloud, cluster, and CI substrate, while you own the ML systems that run on top of it.

You will work closely with product, engineering, and research partners to turn advanced AI ideas into reliable product capabilities used at scale.

Important note on scope: This is an MLOps and ML systems role, not a generic infrastructure or DevOps role, and not a BI/reporting or experimentation analytics role. We are looking for someone who has taken machine learning and LLM systems from prototype to production and operated them in live environments. Deep cloud, Kubernetes, and CI substrate expertise is valued but is owned by our infrastructure engineer; this role is accountable for the model lifecycle that runs on that substrate.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Architect, build, and operate scalable inference services, APIs, and backend components for model-driven and LLM-powered product features

• Productionize AI and ML workflows with strong MLOps practices: model versioning, testing, deployment pipelines, monitoring, rollback, and operational reliability

• Define and implement evaluation frameworks for model quality, system reliability, latency, and cost, and make these a standard part of how models ship

• Build reusable platform patterns, service templates, and reference implementations that multiple teams and products can adopt

• Set and uphold engineering standards across the AI team: code quality, documentation, observability, and incident readiness, and mentor team members in production ML practices

• Partner with our infrastructure owner on the underlying cloud, cluster, and CI substrate, and with product, engineering, and research partners to move AI capabilities into production

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering, machine learning engineering, or applied AI engineering, with clear ownership of systems in production

• Demonstrated experience taking ML and LLM systems from prototype to production and operating them in live environments. This is a hard requirement; we are not looking for a strong infrastructure engineer who has not worked with AI systems

• Strong experience building and operating APIs and services (Python preferred), working with containers, and debugging reliability and performance issues in production

• Strong MLOps skills: deployment and orchestration pipelines, model and artifact versioning, monitoring, and rollback for ML and LLM workloads

• Working knowledge of modern AI patterns (embeddings, retrieval, semantic search, RAG) and their production constraints

IT WOULD BE A BONUS IF YOU HAD

• Experience with vector databases, retrieval infrastructure, or semantic indexing pipelines

• Experience with graph databases or graph-based reasoning systems

• Experience with observability and evaluation for LLM or retrieval systems, including quality metrics, drift, and failure analysis

• A track record of internal engineering standards, templates, or reference implementations adopted by multiple teams

• Experience mentoring engineers in a high-growth or platform-building environment

• Experience in edtech, learning systems, or knowledge and skills modeling

Onsite Collaboration Requirement: This role requires working onsite on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Thursday strongly encouraged as part of our company’s in-person collaboration model.

GROWTH & IMPACT - IN THIS ROLE, YOU'LL BE EXPECTED TO

In this role, you will own the ML systems and MLOps foundation that every AI capability on the team depends on. You will shape the architecture, standards, and reference patterns that let modeling and retrieval specialists ship their work reliably, and you will be the person who makes production AI at Instructure dependable, observable, and repeatable.

WHY JOIN US

Join us and help shape the future of education by turning cutting-edge AI into reliable product capabilities.

At Instructure, we're on a mission to help educators and students learn together, anytime, anywhere, and however works best. You'll join our research-driven team tackling education's biggest challenges with cutting-edge technology. Our projects have included making sense of unstructured feedback, applying large language models to save teachers' time and improve student experiences, classifying partner networks for smarter recommendations, and detecting fraud to protect resources for real learners.

We value diversity, creativity, and passion, and invest in our teams through mentorship, hack weeks, internal conferences, and a culture where innovation thrives. Here, you'll have the chance to build the next generation of LMS features that make a real impact on students and teachers, and do it in a collaborative, supportive enviro

Get in on all the awesome at Instructure!

We offer competitive, meaningful benefits in every country where we operate. While they vary by location, here's a general idea of what you can expect:

• Competitive compensation, plus all full-time employees participate in our ownership program - because everyone should have a stake in our success.

• Flexible work culture. Our remote, hybrid and in-office collaboration spaces vary by role, team and location.

• Generous time off, including local holidays and our annual “Dim the Lights” period in late December, when teams are encouraged to step back and recharge based on departmental needs.

• Comprehensive wellness programs and mental health support

• Learning and development resources, including professional development tools and tuition reimbursement, to support your growth

• The technology and tools you need to do your best work

• Motivosity employee recognition program

• A culture rooted in inclusivity, support, and meaningful connection

We believe in hiring great people and treating them right. The more diverse we are, the better our ideas and outcomes.

Instructure is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We comply with applicable employment and anti-discrimination laws in every country where we operate.

All employees must pass a background check as part of the hiring process. To help protect our teams and systems, we’ve implemented identity verification measures. Candidates may be asked to verify their legal name, current physical location, and provide a valid contact number and residential address, in accordance with local data privacy laws.

Any attempt to misrepresent personal or professional information will result in disqualification.