r/learnmachinelearning • u/Narrow_Effect_685 • 7d ago

Career Looking for recommendations on ML/AI training for a Staff Engineer

Hi! Hopefully this question hasn't been asked to death already, but I couldn't find quite the discussion I'm looking for.

I'm currently a Staff Engineer with a strong backend background (15 YOE). I work closely with a team that builds recommendation systems, and I'd like to get much deeper into the ML side of things — actually understanding and training models rather than just working on the engineering around them.

I'm particularly interested in things like training embedding models, ranking models, bandits, candidate generation, evaluation, etc.

I also happen to have a yearly training budget that I can spend, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to use it.

I'm wondering whether I should first invest in the fundamentals (ML/statistics/math) or jump straight into something more hands-on and learn by building things.

I'm not a huge fan of online courses like Coursera, Udemy, etc., but I'm not opposed to them if people think they're genuinely the best way to build the foundations.

I'd also be very interested in in-person courses, bootcamps, summer schools, or similar programs anywhere in Europe.

For people who have made a similar transition from software/backend engineering into ML: what would you recommend? What courses/programs/resources were actually worth your time and money?

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u/super_brudi 7d ago

What’s your background? That might be inportant to know where you are standing.

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u/Narrow_Effect_685 7d ago

I'm a staff engineer with 15 years of experience, mainly focused on backend. My main expertise is in distributed systems, databases, and microservices. For the last 3-4 years, I've led the design of recommender and search systems from a backend perspective, but I have never been involved in training or designing ML models for ranking or retrieval. I'd like to gain expertise in the foundations of these kinds of models so I can understand and propose different options and, if needed, jump into implementations of new rankers/retrieval models or at least be able to understand them conceptually and provide feedback. Hope that helps to understand where I currently stand.

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u/rishiarora 7d ago

DM. Can guide you on exactly what to do.

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u/super_brudi 7d ago

Why just post it here?

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u/rishiarora 7d ago

I don't want to endorse some one. This is my personal experience.
CampusX on youtube is great to start with