Principal machine learning engineer (L5) at Twilio, remote across India, researching and shipping LLM orchestration, retrieval and personalisation for a fast-adopting product.

This remote-first India role was posted on 8 October 2026. Twilio builds communications infrastructure used by hundreds of thousands of businesses, and this principal-level seat works on a fast-moving product seeing rapid adoption: designing rigorous experiments from nebulous ideas within weeks, and conducting deep-dive research into state-of-the-art LLM orchestration, retrieval strategies and data-driven personalisation. The listing asks for 10+ years of applied ML/AI experience with a track record of owning technically ambitious systems end to end.

About Twilio

Twilio builds communications APIs - messaging, voice, email and customer engagement - used by hundreds of thousands of businesses, per its listings. The company describes itself as remote-first.

Twilio hires remotely across India for engineering roles, including machine learning positions, per its listings. Learn more on Twilio's website.

The role in plain terms

Principal level here means research taste plus shipping discipline: the responsibilities pair deep-dive research into LLM orchestration and retrieval with executing experiments within weeks. That combination is rare - most principal ML roles lean either research or platform. The phrasing 'owning technically ambitious systems end to end rather than contributing to someone else's' is the real bar: they want people who have been the technical owner of a system that shipped and mattered, not senior contributors.

The team and the work

Twilio is remote-first with a strong India presence, and this role is explicitly remote across India. The product context - communications and customer engagement - means the ML work touches real-time decisioning and personalisation at very large scale, where latency and reliability constrain model choices. At L5, expect to set technical direction across teams and to represent the work to engineering leadership.

What the employer asks for

These requirements are quoted from the employer's listing, kept in their exact words so eligibility details are not distorted:

Twilio values diverse experiences from all kinds of industries, and we encourage everyone who meets the required qualifications to apply. If your career is just...
10+ years applied ML/AI experience with a track record of owning technically ambitious systems end to end rather than contributing to someone else's design.
Comfort operating in a 0-to-1 setting with ambiguous requirements and a strong bias for action.
Proficiency in Python programming language.
Experience building cloud-based services on AWS, GCP, or Azure, with high-volume data, streaming or real-time inference paths, and a range of data stores.
Deep expertise in the design, architecture, and deployment of production-grade ML/AI systems, including LLM orchestration, embedding models, and vector stores.
Strong fundamentals of statistical machine learning algorithms, transformer models, LLMs
Ability to raise the technical bar of a team through mentorship, design review, and standards, without formal management authority.

Who this role suits

Applied ML engineers with 10+ years who have owned ambitious LLM or personalisation systems end to end and can move from idea to experiment in weeks. Strong fit for principal ICs who want research depth without leaving production. Not for ML engineers whose experience is purely model training on fixed datasets, or for those seeking a people-management track.

Practical notes

Prepare to discuss a system you owned end to end: the ambiguous starting point, the experiment design, and the shipped outcome. Current fluency in LLM orchestration patterns and retrieval strategies will be probed - this is not a role where textbook ML alone suffices.

Working at Twilio

Engineering at Twilio spans communications infrastructure, customer engagement products and applied machine learning for personalisation at scale.

How to apply

Apply directly on the employer's site: Principal, Machine Learning Engineer (L5) at Twilio. We found this listing on the Greenhouse public job board (job-boards.greenhouse.io), where it was posted on 8 Oct 2026 and was still open when we checked on 30 Oct 2026. Before applying, re-read the employer's own description in full, since eligibility details, deadlines and process steps can change at any time and the employer's page is always the final word. Tailor your resume to the specific requirements above rather than sending a generic one: mirror the skills and tools the listing names where you genuinely have them. A short, specific note on why this team and this problem interest you goes further than a long generic cover letter. Never pay a fee to apply or interview; genuine employers, including this one, do not charge candidates.

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