Lead AI Engineer

Lead AI Engineer
Remote - US Only | $170K-$200K base bonus equity

We're partnering with a next-gen fintech infrastructure company to hire their first Lead AI Engineer - a foundational hire who will be both hands-on in building AI systems and responsible for leading a small team of machine learning engineers.

You'll guide the strategy and execution of AI across underwriting, fraud detection, merchant risk scoring, and operational automation. This role is perfect for someone who wants to stay deeply technical while also growing and mentoring a high-impact team.

• Design, build, and deploy production-grade ML models for fraud detection, risk scoring, and internal automation

• Lead and mentor a team of 2 machine learning engineers while remaining hands-on with architecture, coding, and deployment

• Partner with engineering, product, and risk teams to define and prioritize high-impact AI use cases

• Work with structured and unstructured data across onboarding, identity, and payments systems

• Own the full ML lifecycle: from prototyping and pipeline design to model deployment, monitoring, and iteration

• Establish best practices for model governance, observability, and performance benchmarking

• Evaluate and integrate third-party AI services (e.g., document verification, anomaly detection) where appropriate

• 5-10 years of experience building and deploying ML/AI systems in production

• Strong Python skills; fluency with ML frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, or Scikit-learn

• Experience leading or mentoring other ML engineers while staying hands-on with technical work

• Experience working with financial or transactional datasets

• Hands-on experience shipping models with CI/CD, versioning, and monitoring in place

• Strong architectural thinking - you can lay the technical foundation while remaining execution-focused

• Ability to collaborate cross-functionally and influence technical direction

• Experience in fintech, payments, or fraud/risk modeling

• Familiarity with LangChain, Hugging Face, or vector databases

• Exposure to LLMs, prompt engineering, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)

• Knowledge of identity verification systems, onboarding workflows, or embedded finance

• $170K-$200K base salary performance-based bonus

• Meaningful equity package

• 100% remote (must be based in the U.S.)

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage (50-80% company-covered)

• 401(k) (eligibility after 3 months)

• Unlimited PTO