Lead AI/ML Engineer
Job Summary
Job Description
Join Head Digital Works as a Lead AI/ML Engineer to revolutionize real money gaming experiences using AI. You will design and deliver applied AI/ML solutions for Rummy & Poker platforms, focusing on player personalization, intelligent automation, and addressing business challenges across product, support, acquisition, retention, and fraud/risk. This role involves leading initiatives from concept, mentoring engineers, and collaborating with product and analytics teams to unlock high-impact AI in gaming. You'll build intelligent systems that learn from player behavior and adapt over time, driving innovation in player segmentation, fraud detection, recommendations, and personalization during live play. Responsibilities include researching and prototyping new ML/LLM techniques, developing models on large-scale player data, and defining quality criteria and ROI evaluation. You will also lead technical discussions, conduct code reviews, define standards, and promote engineering best practices, while collaborating with cross-functional teams to align ML work with business goals and champion AI innovation.
Must have:
- 5+ years in ML/AI
- 1-2+ years mentoring engineers
- Proficiency in Python
- Experience with large, high-cardinality tabular data
- Expertise in ML/DL frameworks (pandas, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch)
- Deep learning architecture experience (CNN, RNN/LSTM, Transformer)
- Advanced NLP/LLM experience
- Ability to define modeling hypotheses and evaluate business impact
- Strong AI-first mindset and use of AI tools
Good to have:
- Experience with Reinforcement Learning, RAG, or agentic AI
- Familiarity with data tools (Airflow, Spark, Kafka, Snowflake, Databricks)
- Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- Awareness of MLOps practices
- Peer-reviewed publications or patents in AI/ML
- Background in personalization or player behavior modeling in gaming
12 skills required
Job Details
Why Head Digital Works?
Join a pioneering team applying AI to revolutionize real money gaming experiences. At HDW, innovation isn't just encouraged it's expected. If you're passionate about gaming, AI, and building intelligent systems that entertain and delight, this is your arena.
Role Overview:
As a Lead AI/ML Engineer at Head Digital Works, you’ll design and deliver applied AI/ML solutions across our Rummy & Poker gaming platforms powering immersive experiences, intelligent automation, and large‑scale player personalization. You’ll address business problems across product, support, acquisition, retention, fraud/risk. You’ll lead initiatives from the concept, mentor engineers, and collaborate across product and analytics to unlock high‑impact AI in gaming.
This role isn't just about building models it's about crafting intelligent systems that learn from player behavior and adapt over time.
Key Responsibilities:
ML Strategy & Ownership: Lead ML solutions for high‑impact gaming use cases—player segmentation, fraud & collusion detection, recommendations, and personalization during live play.
Research & Prototyping: Track emerging research; prototype new ML/LLM techniques; run internal experiments to assess value in gaming environments.
Model Development: Build models on large‑scale player data; deliver reproducible training code & inference artifacts; define quality criteria and ROI evaluation.
Team Leadership: Lead technical discussions, mentor senior ML engineers, conduct code reviews, define standards, and drive adoption of engineering best practices.
CrossFunctional Impact: Collaborate closely with product managers, backend teams, and analytics leads to align ML work with measurable business goals.
Reusable ML Solutions: Drive best practices in reproducible modeling, version control, and interpretability.
Champion AI Innovation: Share demos, run workshops, and promote continuous learning across teams.
Qualifications:
Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or related field.
5+ years of experience in ML/AI with at least 1-2+ years mentoring other engineers; track record of delivering ML solutions used across multiple business functions.
Proficiency in Python; solid software engineering practices for production-grade, maintainable, well-tested, modular code.
Track record in handling large, high‑cardinality tabular data (player, session, transactional), including sparsity handling, feature encoding, and scaling.
Expertise in core ML/DL frameworks pandas, scikit‑learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch; working familiarity with MLflow or similar experiment tracking tools.
Deep learning architecture experience have built/trained at least one major neural architecture (CNN, RNN/LSTM, Transformer/sequence models).
Advanced NLP/LLM experience prompt engineering, fine‑tuning, and API integration (Hugging Face ecosystem, Llama, Claude, GPT).
Ability to define modeling hypotheses and collaborate on evaluation methods (offline metrics, A/B input signals) and business impact analysis.
Ability to lead discussions with senior stakeholders, document designs, and provide technical mentorship.
Strong AI first mindset actively use AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, LangChain) to enhance daily workflows, improve velocity, and automate repetitive dev tasks.
Agile and iterative mindset with a commitment to quality and speed.
Preferred Skills:
Experience with Reinforcement Learning, RAG pipelines, or agentic AI is a significant plus.
Familiarity with data tools like Airflow, Spark, Kafka, Snowflake, Databricks and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) for prototyping or data exploration.
Awareness of MLOps practices CI/CD, monitoring, alerting.
Peer-reviewed publications or filed patents in AI/ML.
Background in personalization systems, multiplayer behavior modeling ideally in B2C gaming, real‑money Rummy/Poker, or broader consumer tech.
Strong sense of ownership, curiosity, and a bias toward building fast and learning faster.
What Drives Us?
Player-First Mindset: We build experiences that delight, empower and protect our players.
AI-Led Innovation: We use cutting-edge ML to transform gaming intelligently and responsibly.
Own the Outcome: We take end-to-end responsibility from idea to measurable player & business impact.
Collaborate & Grow: We succeed as a team and grow through continuous learning and mentorship.
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About The Company
We are one of India's oldest online skill-gaming companies that develop and operate zeal-driven applications for online gaming enthusiasts. With more than 60 million+ users and multiple brand verticals like A23 Rummy, A23 Poker A23 Games and Cricket.com, Head Digital Works has come a long way in the past 17 years. What started from a small garage in 2006 with nothing but a dream - "To become India's leading online gaming portal" has now turned into one of the most profitable start-ups in India that have gone through cycles of angel, venture capital and private equity investments.
We're a diverse group of thinkers and doers who are reimagining what's possible to make it easier for all of us to do what we love in new ways.
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