In this episode, Valerii Babushkin, Senior Director at BP and former Meta E7, shares insights on career transitions, ML system design, and navigating high-level IC and management roles. He discusses why he moved between IC and leadership positions, the challenges of onboarding at top tech companies, and how to identify what truly matters in a company. Valerii also dives into engineering communication, the importance of documentation, and why a strong writing culture is key for success. We also explore ML system design principles, including how to write an effective design doc, choosing the right loss functions and metrics, and avoiding common pitfalls like data leakage. Valerii shares his thoughts on Kaggle, when it’s useful for career growth, and what differentiates staff, senior staff, and principal engineers. If you’re aiming to level up in ML, this episode is packed with actionable career and technical advice! 🚀 🔗 Resources Mentioned 📖 Valerii’s Book: Machine Learning System Design https://amzn.to/4hGaX5l 🔗 Connect with Valerii on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/venheads 📄 Staff Engineer Book: https://amzn.to/4hCfq9l