Lead Machine Learning Engineer

Key Skills

Algorithms, Apache Airflow, Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, API, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), HDFS, Jupyter Notebook, Kubernetes-K8s, Pandas, PostgreSQL, PyTorch, REST API, Scikit-learn, Snowflake, TensorFlow

Job Description

About Tala

Tala is a global technology company building the world’s most accessible financial services. With more than $350 million raised from visionary investors, we are serving millions of customers around the world who have been overlooked by traditional financial institutions – and our plan is to serve millions more, and have been named by the Fortune Impact 20 list, CNBC’s Disruptor 50, and Forbes’ Fintech 50 list for five years running. We are expanding across product offerings, countries and crypto and are looking for people who have an entrepreneurial spirit and are passionate about the mission.

By creating a unique platform that enables lending and other financial services around the globe, people in emerging markets are able to start and expand small businesses, manage day-to-day needs, and pursue their financial goals with confidence. Currently, more than 7 million people across Kenya, the Philippines, Mexico, and India have used Tala products. Due to our global team, we have a remote-first approach, and also have offices in Santa Monica, CA (HQ); Nairobi, Kenya; Mexico City, Mexico; Manila, the Philippines; and Bangalore, India. 

Most Talazens join us because they connect with our mission of enabling financial agency for underbanked people around the world. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Tala, we’d love to hear from you!

The Lead Machine Learning Engineer is an individual contributor and a technical lead who will build, monitor, and maintain Tala’s core machine learning and causal inference services and tooling. In addition, you will own customer-facing real-time streaming feature extraction and model inference, model-related batch compute platforms and jobs, service level objective definition and measurement, root cause analysis, software and architecture design, enterprise technical maturity assessment, highly effective cross-functional collaboration, and mentorship. You will effectively represent Tala in the greater machine learning engineering community, participating in knowledge sharing, open source projects, technical writing and speaking, and community evangelism.

What you'll do

• Develop Data Scientist and Analyst-friendly self-service tooling and frameworks to explore new data sources, extract new features, and train, test, deploy, and monitor models. 
• Optimize the model development and software development life cycles.
• Maximize quality of models, services, and tooling with unit testing, integration testing, dry run and blue-green deployment, infrastructure-as-code, automation, observability, and fault tolerance.
• Write and review design documents, perform code reviews, and weigh in on implementation choices from other technical teams. 
• Collaborate with and support cross functional teams (Product, Data Platform, Credit, and Business Development).
• Raise the bar internally and increase our reputation externally.

What you'll need

• 6+ years backend software experience in consumer scale applications, at least 4 of them with Python.
• 2+ of those years in real-time streaming data (Kafka, Kinesis, Beam, Flink, Spark Streaming).
• 2+ of those years in a tech lead role. 
• Experience autonomously building machine learning or causal inference models to solve business problems.
• Proficiency with machine learning tools and tech (Jupyter, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, Xgboost, Tensorflow, Pytorch, Hugging Face).
• Strong database experience, both relational and non-relational (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, HDFS, Snowflake, Druid).
• Strong hands-on experience in cloud computing (AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes).
• Experience with batch processing platforms (Airflow, Metaflow).
• Experience with API development for mobile/web use (REST, GraphQL, gRPC, Protocol Buffers).
• Strong collaboration experience with Data Science, Analytics, other Engineering teams, and business stakeholders.
• Able to create new structure in ambiguous environments. 
• Knowledge of scalable algorithms.
• Prefer advanced degree in computer science, math, or related field.

We strive to provide Talazens and their loved ones with a holistic benefit experience! We champion your financial, physical, and mental health by offering valuable benefits and resources to help you care for the whole you.

• Competitive compensation programs with stock/equity program
• Flexible work environments and Hybrid/Remote-first work model
• Medical (HMO, PPO, HSA), Dental PPO, Vision, FSA, DC FSA
• Employer paid Life w AD&D, Short Term and Long Term Disability 
• 401k and Roth 401k 
• Voluntary benefits like critical illness, accident, life, and pet insurance
• Employee Assistance Program
• Paid Holidays, Unlimited PTO, Wellness/rest “sloth days”, Paid Parental leave, Birthday Holiday, Life Event Days off, paid sabbatical after 5 years of service, and more
• Health and Wellness events and seminars

Salary range: $165,000-$220,000

Our vision is to build a new financial ecosystem where everyone can participate on equal footing and access the tools they need to be financially healthy. We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse global team that represents a multitude of backgrounds, cultures, and experience. We hire talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.