Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Kikoff
San Francisco
Workplace: OnsiteFull timeUSD 307,000 - 352,000 annuallyFunction: Data Science & Machine LearningExperience: 8+ yearsEducation: bachelorsSkills: ["Extreme ownership","Clear communication","Craftsmanship","Analytical rigor","Mentorship/leadership"]

Set the technical direction for machine learning across underwriting, fraud/risk, and personalization. Own the ML platform and modeling roadmap end to end—from feature stores and evaluation pipelines to batch/real-time serving, monitoring, and retraining. Lead flagship cash advance and credit underwriting models through validation and champion/challenger testing. Establish model governance for fair lending and audit readiness, and mentor engineers while partnering closely with Product, Risk, Finance, and Engineering.

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Kikoff
Kikoff
3 days ago

Staff Machine Learning Engineer

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Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 11 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Set the technical direction for machine learning across underwriting, fraud/risk, and personalization. Own the ML platform and modeling roadmap end to end—from feature stores and evaluation pipelines to batch/real-time serving, monitoring, and retraining. Lead flagship cash advance and credit underwriting models through validation and champion/challenger testing. Establish model governance for fair lending and audit readiness, and mentor engineers while partnering closely with Product, Risk, Finance, and Engineering.
Location: San Francisco
Workplace: Onsite
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Data Science & Machine Learning
Seniority: Mid level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Define the multi-quarter ML vision and identify where ML drives outsized business value across underwriting, fraud/risk, and personalization.
  • •Architect and evolve the ML platform that runs company models, including feature stores, training/evaluation pipelines, model registry, serving, and monitoring.
  • •Personally lead the most consequential modeling work (cash advance and credit underwriting), owning problem framing through validation, launch, and iteration.
  • •Partner with Risk, Compliance, and Legal to establish model governance, including fair-lending/disparate-impact analysis, explainability, validation standards, monitoring, and audit readiness.
  • •Set experimentation standards by designing experiments and linking offline evaluation to realized outcomes; raise the ML engineering bar via design/code reviews and mentorship.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 307,000 - 352,000 annually

Key Requirements

  • •8+ years of software or machine learning engineering experience, including 5+ years building, deploying, and operating ML systems in production.
  • •Experience as a technical lead or the most senior ML engineer on a team, with direct measurable business impact at scale.
  • •Expert-level Python with strong software engineering fundamentals and system design skills.
  • •Deep production ML lifecycle experience: feature engineering, training, evaluation, batch and real-time serving, monitoring, and retraining.
  • •Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field (advanced degree preferred).
Experience:8+ yearsFintechConsumer lendingCredit underwritingFraudPaymentsRegulated financial services
Education:Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or Statistics (or related field)
Skills:Extreme ownershipClear communicationCraftsmanshipAnalytical rigorMentorship/leadership
Tech Stack:PythonPyTorchAWSGCPDockerKubernetesFeature storesModel registryMLOpsCI/CDGradient-boosted treesReal-time servingBatch servingModel monitoringRubyRails

Company Brief

Kikoff
Kikoff provides a credit-building product that helps consumers build credit history and access affordable lines of credit through a mobile-first platform and educational tools to improve financial health.
Industry: Lending
Growth: Early Stage Startup
Headquarters: San Francisco, United States
Founded: 2019
Website