There is no way machine learning will be a necessary skill for software engineering, if that is your motivation I would not spend time learning it. However, if

There is no way machine learning will be a necessary skill for software engineering, if that is your motivation I would not spend time learning it. However, if you still want to learn it you should first study statistics, for instance http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/ http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/.