Senior Engineer- Machine Learning

Badger Meter - Where Every Drop Counts and So Do You
 

At Badger Meter, we're more than a leading global water technology company - we're innovators with a mission: to preserve and protect the world's most precious resource. For over 120 years, our trusted solutions have enabled our customers to optimize the delivery and use of water, maximize revenue and reduce waste.

Every employee at Badger Meter is an important part of our success. Here, your work doesn't just move a business forward - it shapes a more sustainable future. We are committed to building a workplace where we celebrate differences, empower voices, and encourage fresh ideas that drive innovation.

When you join us, you'll find:

• Purpose-driven work that makes a real difference in communities around the globe.

• Career growth and development opportunities designed to help you achieve your potential.

• A supportive, inclusive culture where collaboration and creativity thrive.

Be part of something bigger. At Badger Meter, your contributions will ripple far beyond the workplace - creating lasting change for people and the planet.

What You Will Contribute:
 

Senior Engineer, Machine Learning

Job Description

The Senior Engineer, Machine Learning is a mid-career position of independence and ownership of large investigations and projects. The Senior Engineer will define the scope and tasks for machine learning initiatives and may perform the efforts themselves or with one or more engineers assisting. The successful candidate will possess strong knowledge of modeling techniques and system performance, and be able to define resources and time needed to estimate project efforts. This role focuses on the design, development, testing, validation, deployment, and ongoing tuning of machine learning pipelines and models that support product performance, installation quality, and outage detection, as well as fleet-wide health monitoring of the deployed population of millions of meters, sensors, radios, connectivity equipment, and other IoT devices in support of the Systems Integration team, and also encompasses the data infrastructure, integration, and monitoring systems that keep those models reliable at scale. The Senior Engineer is expected to contribute quickly to the team's portfolio of algorithms, ML models, and AI tools, creating predictive models, classifiers, time series data mining, and anomaly detection algorithms, and will work closely with developers, data engineers, data scientists, and reliability, quality, and design engineering to identify and address product weaknesses. The Senior Engineer will represent the team on projects and investigations, report findings to leadership, and act as a mentor to other engineers.

ESSENTIAL JOB DUTIES:

Leadership & Scope-Setting

• Act as project lead engineer for machine learning initiatives; may lead a technical team

• Define the scope of machine learning projects and investigations; develop or provide input to schedules and budgets

• Define and control model design standards and validation criteria

• Mentor other engineers, including guidance on data ingestion, cleaning, and model development practices

• Provide oversight of model performance dashboards, ML-driven product support issues, and customer-impacting model behavior

ML Pipeline & Model Lifecycle

• Design, build, and maintain end-to-end machine learning pipelines, from data preparation through training, validation, deployment, and production monitoring

• Develop, tune, and maintain predictive models, classifiers, and AI tools, such as installation quality and outage detection models, to improve accuracy and reliability

• Develop time series data mining and anomaly detection algorithms to monitor the health and performance of millions of deployed meters, sensors, radios, and IoT devices

• Recommend corrective actions and trigger field responses, or hand off findings to design and reliability engineers

• Establish testing and validation frameworks to confirm model outputs against real-world data, including coordinating field or manual verification studies

• Monitor deployed models for drift, degraded performance, or unexpected outcomes, and lead remediation efforts

• Support integration of model outputs into customer-facing dashboards and reporting tools

• Identify opportunities to improve existing infrastructure, workflows, products, and investigations with machine learning models

Data Infrastructure & Integration

• Design and maintain data pipelines that integrate internal and external data sources, such as carrier network data, weather data, and manufacturing test data, into shared indices and datasets

• Interface with AWS cloud infrastructure for machine learning workloads, such as SageMaker, EC2, ECS, and Glue

• Utilize datastores such as Elasticsearch and Amazon Redshift, including indices and data structures supporting model training and inference

• Contribute to database and data architecture improvements as needed to support growing model and pipeline complexity

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with engineering, digital engineering, and analytics teams to align model outputs with product and business needs

• Work closely with developers, data engineers, data scientists, and reliability, quality, and design engineering to identify and address product weaknesses revealed by fleet and field data

• Share standardized machine learning libraries, tools, and best practices across teams to reduce duplicated effort and improve consistency

• Collaborate with customer-facing teams to validate model results and translate findings into actionable insights

Documentation & Process

• Initiate and manage tickets in the team's ticketing system (e.g., JIRA)

• Write, review, validate, and audit procedures related to model development, testing, and deployment

QUALIFICATIONS:

Education

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science, or Data Analytics, or equivalent practical experience

Required Experience & Technical Skills

• 5+ years of related experience in machine learning, data science, or applied analytics; a Master's degree with related research may count toward a portion of this experience, depending on the topic and exposure to distributed sensor and device network data

• Strong foundation in engineering and statistical fundamentals

• Proficiency in Python and SQL; experience with NoSQL data stores, Elasticsearch, Amazon Redshift, Grafana, and Jupyter Notebooks; additional languages (e.g., C#) a plus

• Experience with version control tools and workflows (e.g., GitHub) for code and model management

• Experience with cloud-based data and machine learning platforms, preferably Amazon Web Services (e.g., S3, SageMaker, Redshift, EC2, ECS, Glue)

• Significant experience with statistics, machine learning, or other mathematical modeling and simulation techniques, including predictive modeling, classification, time series data mining, and anomaly detection

• Experience modeling performance and detecting anomalies in IoT device, sensor, or endpoint data at scale (e.g., fleets of meters, radios, or connectivity equipment)

• Experience with large-scale time series data sets and near-real-time analysis

• Experience designing, testing, validating, and deploying machine learning models in a production environment

• Experience with data visualization and business intelligence (BI) tools

• Ability to work with non-technical stakeholders to define expectations and success criteria for new models and algorithms, and to communicate results in clear, non-technical terms

Preferred Qualifications

• Ability to quickly develop working knowledge of metering, sensor, radio, and connectivity products

• Ability to independently solve problems and implement solutions

• Demonstrated judgment and decision-making within a defined level of authority

• Demonstrated ability to drive projects to completion

• Experience integrating external or third-party data sources (e.g., carrier network data, weather data, manufacturing/test data) into machine learning pipelines

• Experience managing machine learning pipelines end-to-end, from training through deployment and production monitoring

• Understanding of device hardware, reliability, or failure analysis sufficient to translate model findings into corrective-action recommendations (e.g., using field returns or test data)

• Familiarity with Lean Six Sigma or other continuous improvement methodologies

Competitive Total Rewards at Badger Meter:

• Competitive Pay

• Annual Bonus

• Eligible for Annual Pay Increases

• Comprehensive Health, Vision, and Dental Coverage 

• 15 days Paid Time Off + 11 Paid Holidays  

• Two Ways to Save for Retirement: Badger Meter contributes 25 cents for every dollar you contribute to the plan, up to 7% of your eligible compensation.  In addition to the match, the company will also contribute 5% of your eligible compensation to your Defined Contribution account on an annual basis. Additional access to a certified financial planner to help ensure your money is working for you, at no cost!

• Employer Paid benefits including: Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Basic Group Life Insurance, Short Term Disability, and more 

• Educational Assistance – Tuition Reimbursement up to $5,250 

• Voluntary benefits including: Additional Life Insurance, Long Term Disability, Accident and Critical Illness coverage

• Health Savings Account (HSA) & Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options

An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. This company considers candidates regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status. Applicants can learn more about their rights regarding equal opportunity in employment by viewing the federal "EEO is the Law" poster and the “EEO is the Law” poster supplement at http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/posters/ofccpost.htm

Badger Meter complies with all aspects of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as amended by the ADA Amendments Act, and all applicable state or local disability laws. This means that we will reasonably accommodate qualified employees with a disability if accommodation would allow them to perform the essential functions of their job, unless doing so would create an undue hardship.  

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