A machine learning (ML) engineer is an IT professional who designs and builds AI systems that use machine learning to automate predictive models. They work with data scientists, data analysts, and other data science team members to develop, maintain, and improve AI systems.
ML engineers are responsible for a variety of tasks, including:
Data collection and preprocessing: Working with data scientists to gather, extract, transform, and clean data for training machine learning models
Model development: Selecting algorithms, fine-tuning model parameters, and evaluating model performance
Feature engineering: Creating features or variables to help models extract patterns from data
Deploying models: Putting models into production so they can serve real users
ML engineers need a strong foundation in computer science, mathematics, statistics, software engineering, and coding and programming languages. They also need to be able to quickly analyze large data sets, identify patterns, and use that data to draw meaningful conclusions.
A college education isn’t always required to become an ML engineer, but many professionals learn relevant skills while pursuing a degree in computer science or data science.