Founding AI/ML Engineer - Fintech Lending, Hybrid NYC

LendKoi, Inc.; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Flexible NYC hybrid

Job summary

LendKoi, Inc. in New York, NY, is seeking a Senior Founding AI/ML Engineer to design, build, and ship ML-powered features at the core of our lending platform. You will own the lifecycle from prototype to production, collaborating with a cross-functional team and vendor partners.

We value hands-on builders who thrive in an early-stage startup, with strong Python/Django skills, NLP/LLMs, and a pragmatic, production-first mindset. This is a hybrid NY role with pay + equity.

Qualifications

• 6+ years designing, building, deploying production-grade ML models
• Deep proficiency in Python and ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn
• Experience with NLP, LLMs, and RAG architectures
• Strong data science foundation with statistical modeling
• Experience with AWS (configuring, not just deploying)
• Familiarity with Git, CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment
• Ability to ship models into production with Django REST Framework

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy production ML models across the lending lifecycle: credit risk, underwriting, fraud signals, and cash-flow-based decisioning
• Build AI-powered product features: LLM/RAG for borrower support and document understanding
• Own full model lifecycle: data/feature engineering, prototyping, deployment, monitoring, retraining
• Make models trustworthy and compliant: explainable predictions and fair-lending
• Integrate models into Django backend and expose via API; collaborate with full-stack engineer
• Turn multi-vendor data into reliable features and signals

Skills

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

NLP/LLMs

Django

APIs

AWS

Git

CI/CD

Education

Master’s degree or PhD (CS/DS/Engineering)

Tools

Django REST Framework

TypeScript/Next.js

Job description

LendKoi, Inc. in New York, NY, is seeking a Senior Founding AI/ML Engineer to design, build, and ship ML-powered features at the core of our lending platform. You will own the lifecycle from prototype to production, collaborating with a cross-functional team and vendor partners.

We value hands-on builders who thrive in an early-stage startup, with strong Python/Django skills, NLP/LLMs, and a pragmatic, production-first mindset. This is a hybrid NY role with pay + equity.