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by _RPL5_
1985 days ago
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Thank you for the detailed response. It makes things a lot clearer. I notice that you mention "Machine Learning Engineer" as a separate role. If in the idealized world, data scientists do analytics and train models, and data engineers take care of data, then what do Machine Leaning Engineers do? Are they, basically, software engineers who specialize in putting other peoples' models into production? And you are right in sensing my confusion. There seems to be an abundance or data-related titles, which seem to overlap in their functions a lot, but are also very different when you examine them closely. So thank you again for your responses, they are very helpful. |
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It depends on the company. Traditionally, yes, but deployment into production can be automated, so typically today it is something different.
An MLE is someone who specializes in Tensorflow or PyTorch. They write deep neural networks, reinforcement learning, and more. Often times the data scientist will make a model, specializing in feature engineering and domain experience, and use a generic ML like a generic DNN or xgboost or whatever it may be. It then gets handed off to an MLE who writes ML specific for the problem to get every last drop of accuracy out of the model. They then hand it off to prod. I don't think they're on call (I could be wrong on this.) so today they're not really deploying models much. They're more an inbetween.
I work at small companies and startups so I've never worked with an MLE, but I do have friends who are managers at Google who told me about it, so that's where this information is coming from, telephone game. In other words, I'd take this with a grain of salt. ymmv.
Starting in 2018 big name companies couldn't get enough MLEs and they pay higher than DS', but many bootcamps and universities center around ML skills, so companies started renaming MLE positions to DS positions. This way they get more applicants and they pay them lower. Win-win for them. Too bad it messes up the industry. Today about 1 in 3 data science jobs are ML heavy. They may be MLE exclusive or a hybrid wearing multiple hats light DS to light MLE type jobs.
You can identify which is which if they give you a white board coding problem. Traditional data science work will never have a white board problem.
>So thank you again for your responses, they are very helpful.
You're very welcome. I hope it helps.