Applied AI Manager

CARDO AI

New York (NY)

Hybrid

USD 120,000 - 160,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary + performance-based bonus

Stock option plan

Hybrid working model

Regular team events and annual retreats

Daily perks: snacks, lunch options, good coffee

Job summary

A fintech company in New York is seeking an Applied AI Manager to oversee the integration of AI technologies across its platform. The role involves leading a team to develop robust AI systems and navigating the complexities of structured finance data. Ideal candidates bring strong leadership skills, in-depth knowledge of AI/ML frameworks, and hands-on experience in deploying these systems. This position offers a competitive salary, performance bonuses, and a hybrid work model with flexible hours.

Qualifications

Experience leading engineering teams in high-growth environments.
Knowledge of structured finance including loan tapes and cash flow waterfalls.
Proficient in Python and AI/ML frameworks.

Responsibilities

Lead design and delivery of AI systems that are robust and scalable.
Guide full AI lifecycle from experimentation to monitoring.
Drive architectural decisions for data-intensive applications.

Skills

Team leadership

Structured finance understanding

Software engineering (Python)

AI/ML frameworks knowledge

ML/GenAI systems deployment

Cloud infrastructure familiarity

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

Cardo AI is the platform powering private credit and Asset-Based Finance, a $40 trillion market that still runs on fragmented data, manual workflows, and outdated infrastructure. We're changing that.

Since 2018, we've built the tools that banks, trustees, and investors use to optimize portfolios, streamline transactions, and move faster in complex markets. Over $40Bn in assets run through our platform, and institutions like Blackstone and Encina trust us to power their private credit strategies. We've recently closed a funding round co-led by Blackstone and FinTop Capital to accelerate that mission.

We're at an inflection point: proven product-market fit, strong global traction, and a clear path to becoming the category-defining platform for ABF and private credit worldwide.

The Opportunity

The Data Science & AI team is growing, and we're looking for an Applied AI Manager to lead our application of AI across the platform and the business. You'll work on genuinely hard problems: structured finance data is complex, high-stakes, and largely unstructured, and you'll build systems that actually change how the market operates.

This isn't a research role. We need someone who ships.

The problems you'll work on are specific to this market: extracting logic from legal indentures, building models on top of loan-level tape data, automating waterfall calculations, and turning messy deal documentation into clean, reliable data pipelines. Generic ML experience won't cut it here. You need to understand what the data means.

Here’s the kind of work you'll own:

Lead the design and delivery of complex ML and GenAI systems, robust, scalable, and built for production
Guide the team across the full AI lifecycle, from experimentation and evaluation through deployment and monitoring, with a strong focus on reproducibility and reliability
Drive architectural decisions for data-intensive, AI-driven applications, making sharp trade-offs between cutting-edge approaches and production readiness
Apply NLP and GenAI to extract structure from unstructured financial documents: credit agreements, indentures, servicer reports
Build and deploy models that operate on structured finance data, where a logic error has real financial consequences
Mentor and grow engineers across levels, building a high-performing team with strong engineering culture
Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Data, and Business teams to shape roadmaps and deliver real impact
Champion AI adoption across the organization and influence company-wide technology strategy

About You

This role is a strong fit if you:

Have proven experience leading engineering teams in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
Understand structured finance well enough to build on top of it: loan tapes, cash flow waterfalls, ABS/CLO structures, priority of payments. You don't need to be a banker, but you need to know what a delinquency trigger is and why it matters
Combine strong software engineering (Python preferred) with deep knowledge of AI/ML frameworks, GenAI tooling, and modern data infrastructure
Have hands-on experience building and deploying ML/GenAI systems in production in finance, legal, or other high-complexity, data-heavy domains
Can lead architectural discussions and technical trade-offs without losing sight of the details
Are familiar with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and modern MLOps practices
Care about people development: mentoring, performance conversations, building teams that do their best work
Bonus points for experience with NLP and document processing on financial contracts, RAG or LLM-based applications on structured data, large-scale loan data pipelines, or containerization tooling (Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform).

Why Cardo AI

You'll own meaningful work in a market that's large, underserved, and moving fast. The problems are real, the data is genuinely complex, and the team is strong. There's real room to shape how AI gets applied across the business and the industry.

What We Offer