Head of Applied ML — Identity & Fraud Risk

SentiLink; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employer paid health insurance

401(k) with employer match

Flexible paid time off

Regular in-person company events

Home office stipend

Job summary

SentiLink builds fraud detection and identity verification models that power a large part of the US financial system. As Head of Applied ML, you own a major ML domain end to end, leading a team of skilled scientists and shaping product-driven AI strategies.

You’ll guide modeling decisions, ensure production-grade Python code, and collaborate with leadership across Product, Engineering, and Risk. This role emphasizes strategic impact, AI safety, and data governance in a fast-growing company.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of industry experience applying ML or statistics to real-world problems.
• 6+ years managing ML or data science teams across two or more companies.
• Experience in fraud, identity, fintech, banking, financial services, payments, or risk domains.
• Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD in CS, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, or other quantitative field.
• Proven production ML deployment and production-grade Python code/tests.
• Strong end-to-end ownership with measurable business impact.
• Fluent with modern LLMs and AI-assisted development workflows.
• Excellent communicator with leadership and cross-functional tolerance and stakeholders.
• Legal eligibility to work in the United States and reside in the United States.
• Startup experience strongly preferred.
• Awareness of AI safety and data governance.

Responsibilities

• Directly manage a team of applied ML scientists, 4 today and growing to 6 by 2026.
• Own strategy and execution for your applied ML domain: roadmap, priorities, resourcing, results.
• Act as a technical mentor; review PRs and guide modeling decisions.
• Partner with senior leadership, Product, Engineering, and Risk to set priorities.
• Represent your domain in product strategy discussions and shape future products.
• Own SentiLink's fraud detection and identity models across the full lifecycle.
• Drive how the team uses AI and define where it belongs in our products.

Skills

Applied ML

Team management

Technical mentoring

Python

Production ML

Education

PhD in quantitative field

Bachelor/Master in CS/Statistics/Math/Physics

Tools

Python

PostgreSQL

AWS

XGBoost

scikit-learn

pandas

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

Neo4j

MLflow

Flyte

Job description

SentiLink builds fraud detection and identity verification models that power a large part of the US financial system. As Head of Applied ML, you own a major ML domain end to end, leading a team of skilled scientists and shaping product-driven AI strategies.

You’ll guide modeling decisions, ensure production-grade Python code, and collaborate with leadership across Product, Engineering, and Risk. This role emphasizes strategic impact, AI safety, and data governance in a fast-growing company.