Lead Machine Learning Engineer

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our exciting team of employees. Royal Caribbean Group is pleased to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

We are proud to be the vacation-industry leader with global brands — including Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises — the most innovative fleet and private destinations, and the best people. Together, we are dedicated to turning the vacation of a lifetime into a lifetime of vacations for our guests.

The Royal Caribbean Group’s AI & Analytics Team has an exciting career opportunity.y for a full time Lead ML Engineer reporting to the Senior Manager, Data Science.

The position is onsite and based in Miami, Florida. 

The position is also not eligible for work authorization sponsorship.

Position Summary

The Lead Machine Learning Engineer delivers end-to-end Analytics & AI products for Royal Caribbean Group’s Global Marine Operations, Newbuild & Innovation, Deployment, Risk Management, and IT Smart Fleet teams. This role is responsible for taking solutions from problem framing and data acquisition through production deployment and ongoing operations. The engineer designs and operationalizes the full stack required for AI solutions, including data pipelines, feature stores, training and evaluation workflows, model serving, APIs, dashboards, and integrations with shipboard and shoreside systems. The position focuses on improving shipboard asset reliability and lifecycle performance through predictive and condition-based maintenance, anomaly detection, forecasting, operational optimization, and decision support to enhance safety, uptime, and energy efficiency. As a hands-on technical leader, the Lead Machine Learning Engineer owns architecture decisions, writes production code, and partners with product, data, and platform teams to deliver measurable outcomes, combining independent execution with mentorship and collaborative capability building.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Owns end-to-end delivery of AI products, leading through influence, mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Builds production-ready data pipelines, training/evaluation workflows, and model serving (batch and real-time), plus web applications and APIs that deliver AI features to end users.
• Develops and deploys solutions for asset reliability and operational optimization, including predictive and condition-based maintenance, anomaly detection, forecasting, risk and failure analysis, and spare-parts optimization.
• Establishes strong engineering practices, including code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, monitoring, and retraining triggers.
• Develops custom AI agents that use approved tools and data to automate workflows, with safety checks and clear evaluation of outputs.
• Translates operational needs into clear requirements and success metrics, communicating progress, tradeoffs, and outcomes to stakeholders, including executive leadership.
• Measures and reports impact using practical metrics such as reduced downtime, improved maintenance planning, fuel/energy savings, and cost reduction.
• Drives adoption of delivered solutions and ensures alignment with shipboard operational constraints and sustainability targets.
• Engages regularly with senior stakeholders and coordinates with external partners for technology performance verification and asset strategy.
• Ensures solutions deliver against availability, safety, and sustainability targets, including failure-mode and risk analysis, asset lifecycle optimization, and inventory optimization.

Qualifications, Knowledge and Skills

• Master’s degree in a relevant field required; Ph.D. strongly preferred.

• Typically, 7+ years working on Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and AI projects; candidates holding a Ph.D. may be considered with fewer years of professional experience (e.g., 4+ years) when accompanied by strong research and applied outcomes.
• Minimum of 3+ years of software engineering experience with proficiency in Python.
• Experience leading and creating advanced AI models and solutions.
• Hands-on experience with Deep Learning tools and packages (e.g., TensorFlow, Keras).
• Experience with big-data analysis frameworks and languages (e.g., PySpark, Dask, Polars).
• Experience with cloud platforms, especially Microsoft Azure, for building and operating AI solutions, including APIs, data pipelines, and custom AI agents.
• Strong background in one or more of the following: Mathematics, Statistics, Probability, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Recommendation Systems, Pattern Recognition, Large Scale Data Mining, or Artificial Intelligence.
• Demonstrated capacity for learning and assimilating new techniques, tools, and methods.
• Highly motivated with the ability to influence change and drive innovation in a sustainable and profitable manner.
• Experience leading the development of advanced composite and pipelined models.
• Strong ability to collaborate in a matrix organization and enhance team performance.
• Leadership skills including coaching, teambuilding, conflict resolution, and management.
• Comfortable delivering within an agile program.

• Expertise in MLOps/LLMOps, including model registry, reproducible training, monitoring, drift detection, and retraining.
• Strong engineering practices: versioning, automated testing, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and secure coding.
• Ability to develop models impacting financial decisions and budgets.

• Effective mentor and collaborator, able to build capability and drive adoption.
• Strong interpersonal skills to communicate with all levels of management.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a cross-functional team.

Agency and Third-Party Submissions: Please note this is a direct search by the Company, and applications through agencies and other third parties will not be accepted, nor will fees be paid for unsolicited resumes. Any unsolicited resumes will be considered the Company's property.

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. We'll hope to see you onboard soon!

It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.