Head of Applied ML — Fraud & Identity Innovation Leader

SentiLink; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employer-paid health insurance for you

Employer 401(k) with company match

Flexible paid time off

Company-wide events

Home office stipend

Job summary

SentiLink seeks a Head of Applied ML to own a major ML domain end to end, leading a growing team of applied ML scientists. You’ll drive modeling, deployment, and governance while partnering with Product, Risk, and Engineering to shape product strategy and outcomes.

You will guide architecture decisions, review code, and push boundaries in AI-enabled fraud and identity verification, with a strong emphasis on safety and data governance.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of ML or statistics experience; 7+ years with a relevant PhD.
• Minimum 6+ years leading ML or data science teams across two+ companies.
• Experience in fraud, identity, fintech, banking, or risk domains preferred.

Responsibilities

• Directly manage a team of applied ML scientists, 4 today, growing to 6 by end of 2026.
• Set strategy and execution for the applied ML domain: roadmap, priorities, resourcing, results.
• Mentor the team; review PRs, guide modeling decisions, and stay current on codebase and prod systems.
• Partner with senior leadership, Product, Engineering, and Risk to set priorities and timelines.
• Represent domain in product strategy discussions and shape future product directions.
• Own fraud detection and identity models across full lifecycle: data, features, training, deployment, monitoring.
• Research new fraud patterns and design ML capabilities for identity verification and risk.
• Drive AI usage in its work and define where AI belongs in products.

Skills

Team leadership

ML domain expertise

Strategic product alignment

Technical mentoring

Communication with leadership

Education

PhD or MSc in CS/Stats/Math/Physics

Bachelor's degree in quantitative field

Tools

Python

PostgreSQL

AWS

MLflow

Job description

SentiLink seeks a Head of Applied ML to own a major ML domain end to end, leading a growing team of applied ML scientists. You’ll drive modeling, deployment, and governance while partnering with Product, Risk, and Engineering to shape product strategy and outcomes.

You will guide architecture decisions, review code, and push boundaries in AI-enabled fraud and identity verification, with a strong emphasis on safety and data governance.