Xpert: Senior Java Developer; Data | Machine Learning; IT consultant

Role: Senior Java Developer (Data | Machine Learning) (IT consultant)
Location: Remote (South Africa-based only)
Engagement: Independent Contractor | 3–6 Month Contract (renewable) (must be able to invoice monthly)
Start: Immediate start required. Max 1 week notice considered

Hours: Late start, late finish (to partly overlap with US hours)

Role Summary

Inspired Xpert is looking for a Machine Learning Engineer (Java) to develop, deploy, and continuously improve a large-scale recommendation system that drives personalised content discovery. You will focus on production-grade machine learning, ensuring models and serving components are reliable, performant, and measurable, and that they integrate cleanly with upstream data pipelines and downstream application services. The role combines hands-on engineering (Java, Python, SQL, Tensor Flow) with practical collaboration across product and engineering teams to translate recommendation goals into delivered features, while communicating model behaviour, experimentation outcomes, and system trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Maintain and enhance an end-to-end recommendation engine for personalised discovery.
• Partner with engineering teams to integrate ML models with data pipelines powering recommendations.
• Work with product and stakeholders to deliver features that meet customer and business needs.
• Communicate system behaviour, trade-offs, and results clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, or similar (or equivalent experience).
• Proven ML engineering experience on large-scale data systems.
• Strong Java, Python, and SQL.
• Tensor Flow 2.x experience (matrix factorisation, factorisation machines advantageous).
• Kubernetes experience.
• Spark and Flink advantageous.
• Open Search beneficial.

Inspired Xpert is a specialist IT Talent Solutions company providing high-quality contract or perm talent across software development, cloud, AI, cybersecurity, and data-driven roles. We connect skilled professionals with innovative companies, offering exciting opportunities to work on impactful projects across the globe.