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name: senior-ml-engineer description: > ML engineering skill for productionizing models, building MLOps pipelines, and integrating LLMs. Covers model deployment, feature stores, drift monitoring, RAG systems, and cost optimization. license: MIT + Commons Clause metadata: version: 1.1.0 author: borghei category: engineering domain: machine-learning updated: 2026-06-17 tags: [ml-pipelines, model-deployment, mlops, rag]

Senior ML Engineer

Production ML engineering patterns for model deployment, MLOps infrastructure, and LLM integration.

Core Capabilities

• Model deployment — export to ONNX/TorchScript/SavedModel, containerize, canary rollout, and serve via FastAPI, Triton, TF Serving, TorchServe, or Ray Serve with p95<100ms / error<0.1% gates.
• MLOps pipelines — feature stores (Feast/Tecton), experiment tracking (MLflow/W&B), model registry, A/B testing, and drift-triggered retraining.
• LLM integration — provider abstraction, retry/fallback with exponential backoff, token counting, response caching, cost tracking, and Pydantic output validation.
• RAG systems — vector database selection, chunking strategies, ingestion, retrieval, and reranking.
• Model monitoring — latency/error tracking, input drift detection (KS test, PSI), prediction-shift alerts, and automated retraining triggers.

When to Use

• Deploying a trained model to production with canary rollout and monitoring.
• Standing up MLOps infrastructure (feature store, registry, retraining).
• Integrating LLM APIs with provider abstraction and cost control.
• Building a RAG pipeline (vector DB + chunking + retrieval + reranking).
• Setting up drift detection and model-health alerting.

Clarify First

Before generating artifacts, confirm these inputs. If any is unknown or vague, ASK — do not assume:

• Task — model deployment / RAG pipeline build / monitoring setup (selects the script and workflow)
• Serving target & rollout — container vs K8s and canary vs direct (drives the generated Dockerfile/manifests and health gates)
• Model or data interface — the input/output contract, and for RAG the corpus + vector store (shapes the scaffold)

Stop rule: ask only the 2-3 that most change the output. If the user says "just draft it," proceed and list your assumptions at the top of the artifact.

Tools

Tool	Purpose	Command
model_deployment_pipeline.py	Generate deployment artifacts (Dockerfile, K8s manifests, health checks)	python scripts/model_deployment_pipeline.py --input <path> --output <path> [--config <file>]
rag_system_builder.py	Scaffold a RAG pipeline with vector store + retrieval logic	python scripts/rag_system_builder.py --input <path> --output <path> [--config <file>]
ml_monitoring_suite.py	Set up drift detection, alerting, and dashboards	python scripts/ml_monitoring_suite.py --input <path> --output <path> [--config <file>]

All tools support --verbose/-v and emit JSON (status, start_time, end_time, processed_items) to stdout. See references/tool-reference.md for full flag detail.

References

Load the reference that matches the task — keep this file lean and pull detail on demand:

• references/production-ml-workflows.md — the five step-by-step workflows (model deployment, MLOps setup, LLM integration, RAG, monitoring) with all code templates, serving/vector-DB/chunking/cost tables, the troubleshooting matrix, and success criteria. Read when executing any workflow.
• references/tool-reference.md — full flag/parameter tables and output formats for the three scripts. Read when scripting the tools.
• references/mlops_production_patterns.md — model deployment pipeline with Kubernetes manifests, feature store architecture with Feast examples, model monitoring with drift detection code, A/B testing with traffic splitting, automated retraining with MLflow. Read when building MLOps infra.
• references/llm_integration_guide.md — provider abstraction layer, retry/fallback with tenacity, prompt templates (few-shot, CoT), token optimization with tiktoken, cost calculation and tracking. Read when integrating an LLM.
• references/rag_system_architecture.md — RAG pipeline implementation code, vector database comparison/integration, chunking strategies, embedding model selection, hybrid search and reranking. Read when building a RAG system.

Scope & Limitations

This skill covers:

• End-to-end model deployment pipelines (packaging, containerization, serving, canary rollout)
• MLOps infrastructure setup (feature stores, experiment tracking, model registries, retraining)
• LLM integration patterns (provider abstraction, retries, caching, cost tracking)
• RAG system architecture (vector databases, chunking, retrieval, reranking)

This skill does NOT cover:

• Model training algorithms or hyperparameter tuning (see senior-data-scientist)
• Raw data pipeline construction and ETL orchestration (see senior-data-engineer)
• Prompt engineering techniques, few-shot design, or prompt optimization (see senior-prompt-engineer)
• Image/video model architectures or computer vision inference optimization (see senior-computer-vision)

Integration Points

Skill	Integration	Data Flow
senior-data-scientist	Receives trained models and evaluation metrics for deployment	Data Scientist exports model artifacts and baseline metrics; ML Engineer packages and deploys
senior-data-engineer	Consumes feature pipelines and data quality outputs	Data Engineer builds ETL and feature pipelines; ML Engineer reads from feature store for serving
senior-prompt-engineer	Provides LLM serving infrastructure for prompt workflows	Prompt Engineer designs prompts; ML Engineer deploys provider abstraction and manages cost/latency
senior-devops	Leverages CI/CD and Kubernetes infrastructure for model serving	DevOps manages cluster and pipelines; ML Engineer defines deployment manifests and health checks
senior-computer-vision	Deploys vision models through shared serving infrastructure	CV Engineer trains and exports models; ML Engineer handles Triton/TorchServe deployment and monitoring
senior-security	Applies security scanning to model containers and API endpoints	Security reviews container images and endpoint auth; ML Engineer remediates findings before promotion

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Last Updated: June 2026 Version: 1.1.0