Senior AI​/ML Engineer

This is a rare opportunity to deploy models with real purpose, where better underwriting and smarter automation translate directly into access to credit for people the traditional system overlooks. We're looking for a Senior Founding AI/ML Engineer to design, build, and ship the machine learning and AI-powered features at the core of our lending platform, and to own their lifecycle from prototype to production.

You'll bring strong problem-solving skills, a collaborative spirit, and a passion for robust, scalable, production-grade models - plus the pragmatism to roll up your sleeves on the engineering needed to get them live. You'll work closely with experienced leaders, a cross-functional team, and our vendor partners.

The compensation for this role is pay + equity. Flexible New York City hybrid. Full time.

• Design, build, and deploy production ML models across the lending lifecycle: credit risk and underwriting, fraud and identity signals, and cash-flow-based decisioning.
• Build AI-powered product features: LLM/RAG systems for borrower support and document understanding (e.g., KYC and income documents), plus internal tooling that makes the team faster.
• Own the full model lifecycle: data and feature engineering, prototyping, production deployment, monitoring, and retraining.
• Make models trustworthy and compliant: explainable predictions, fair-lending awareness, and clear model documentation and governance.
• Integrate models into the Django backend and expose them through the API, partnering with the full-stack engineer so features ship end-to-end.
• Turn a multi-vendor data surface (including credit, cash-flow, and identity data) into reliable features and signals.

• Technical experience as a lead ML engineer, VP of Machine Learning, senior staff ML engineer, principal applied scientist, founding AI/ML engineer, CTO, or similar.
• 6+ years of experience designing, building, and deploying production-grade machine learning models and AI systems, including technical leadership.
• Deep proficiency in Python with experience in ML frameworks (PyTorch, Tensor Flow, scikit-learn).
• Experience with NLP, LLMs, and RAG architectures.
• You care deeply about model interpretability and explainability, and about building systems that users, teammates, and regulators can trust.
• Working proficiency with our application stack - Python and Django (Django REST Framework) - enough to ship your own models into production; comfort with Type Script/Next.js is a plus.
• Strong data science foundation, including hands-on experience with statistical modeling, experimentation, and translating insights into decisions.
• Strong hands-on experience with AWS (configuring, not just deploying).
• Strong familiarity with GIT, CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment.
• Strong command of AI coding tools, with disciplined verification and data-privacy guardrails - you'll be handling sensitive financial and personal data.
• Excellent documentation skills and a commitment to organized, understandable code that scales as the team grows.
• Curiosity about fintech + empathy for users (you are passionate about building technology that solves real-world financial challenges).
• Comfortable in a lean, early-stage environment with high ownership (hands-on, end-to-end builder across the stack); you are a self-starter who builds without needing constant oversight.
• You thrive in fast-paced environments and are excited about pushing AI from research into production.
• Flexible New York City hybrid.
• Master’s degree or PhD in computer science, data science, engineering, or similar.
• Background check, in-person New York interview, and references required.

• Experience designing and supporting the AI/data-science model lifecycle in fintech - from…