Lead ML Data Engineer, AI Core

Nubank; United States; Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Medical Insurance

Dental & Vision

Life Insurance

Maternity/Paternity Leave

Learning Platform

Language Learning

Mental Health Support

401K

Savings Plans

WFH Allowance

Relocation Assistance

Job summary

Nubank seeks a seasoned Machine Learning Engineer to join its AI Core, working on scalable data infrastructures and feature pipelines that feed foundation models powering customer experiences.

You will train, deploy, and monitor models, design experiments to measure improvements, and collaborate with ML, Platform, and Infra teams while mentoring teammates. This hybrid role offers North American offices and opportunities to influence global data strategy.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in ML/ data engineering building production systems.
• Experience building data ingestion pipelines at scale with Ray or Spark.
• Proficient in Python for data workflows and large-scale processing.
• Ability to design experiments and measure model performance.
• Strong communication and leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable data ingestion pipelines for AI Core platform.
• Implement data quality monitoring and validation systems across ML datasets.
• Model new data types into foundation models.
• Analyze impact of new data sources on models and run experiments.
• Develop data preparation workflows transforming raw data into features.
• Tune and optimize models as datasets are integrated.
• Collaborate with AI Core ML, Platform, and Infra teams for seamless data flow.
• Lead technical initiatives to improve data engineering practices.
• Mentor team members and contribute to hiring activities.

Skills

6+ years ML/Data Eng

Distributed compute (Ray/Spark)

Python

Data pipelines

Model training

Experiment design

Leadership mentoring

Communication

Tools

MLflow

Dagster/Airflow

Job description

About Nu

Nu is the leading digital bank in Latin America, serving 135 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. The company has been leading an industry transformation by leveraging data and proprietary technology to develop innovative products and services. Guided by its mission to fight complexity and empower people, Nu caters to customers’ complete financial journey, promoting financial access and advancement with responsible lending and transparency. The company is powered by an efficient and scalable business model that combines low cost to serve with growing returns. Nu’s impact has been recognized in multiple awards, including Time 100 Most Influential Companies, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, and Forbes World’s Best Banks. Visit our institutional page: https://www.nu.com/2026-en

About the Role

At Nu, data is the foundation that powers our AI and machine learning models, enabling millions of customers to access fair financial products. As a Machine Learning Engineer in AI Core, Data Intelligence, you’ll work across a broad spectrum — from building scalable data infrastructure and feature pipelines that feed our state‑of‑the‑art foundation models to designing, training, and shipping transaction classification models that power critical customer experiences across the company.

You’ll work at the intersection of data and applied machine learning, contributing across multiple stages of the ML lifecycle: ingesting and labeling data, training and evaluating models, and helping with deployment and production monitoring through robust quality controls. You’ll partner closely with product, compliance, and ML teams to ensure models are auditable, privacy‑aware, and deliver measurable business value.

You’ll join a team that manages the data engineering backbone of AI Core, ensuring data is accessible, healthy, and properly tracked across our entire ML ecosystem. Here, you’ll combine your expertise in building scalable data systems with your passion for machine learning, creating solutions that enable our models to learn from better, richer data.

You can read more about the work in the AI Core team on our blog: https://building.nubank.com/understanding-our-customers-finances-through-foundation-models/

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable data ingestion pipelines that bring new datasets into our AI Core platform, ensuring reliable, efficient data flow from source to model training.
• Implement data quality monitoring and validation systems that catch issues before they impact model performance, maintaining the health of datasets across our ML ecosystem.
• Model new types of data into our foundation models.
• Analyze the impact of new data sources on existing models, conducting experiments to measure performance improvements and guide data acquisition decisions.
• Develop and maintain data preparation workflows that transform raw data into features ready for model training, working with distributed computing frameworks like Ray.
• Tune and optimize machine learning models when new datasets are integrated, applying hyperparameter optimization and evaluating model performance improvements.
• Collaborate with AI Core ML, Platform, and Infra teams to ensure seamless data flow across our ML infrastructure, from ingestion to model deployment.
• Lead technical initiatives that improve our data engineering practices, setting standards for data quality, pipeline reliability, and model‑data integration.
• Mentor team members and contribute to hiring activities, helping build a strong and diverse team that drives innovation in AI infrastructure.

Basic Qualifications

• Typically 6+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, data engineering, or related fields with a strong track record of building production data and ML systems.
• Proven experience designing and building data ingestion pipelines at scale, with expertise in distributed computing frameworks (Ray, Spark, or similar).
• Strong background in applied machine learning, including model training, hyperparameter tuning, and performance evaluation.
• Experience analyzing how data changes impact model performance, with the ability to design and run experiments to measure improvements.
• Proficiency in Python for data engineering and ML workflows, with experience working with large‑scale data processing systems.
• Solid understanding of data quality principles and experience implementing monitoring, validation, and alerting systems.
• Strong problem‑solving skills with the ability to address complex, ambiguous problems requiring coordination across multiple teams.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of explaining technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrated leadership experience, including mentoring team members and contributing to technical decision‑making.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with MLflow or similar model tracking and versioning systems.
• Knowledge of foundation models, fine‑tuning workflows, and transformer architectures.
• Experience with data pipeline orchestration tools (Dagster, Airflow, or similar).
• Background in financial services or fintech, understanding the unique data challenges in this domain.
• Experience working in a fast‑paced, high‑growth environment with distributed teams.
• Track record of reducing complexity in data systems and improving developer experience for ML teams.

Our Benefits

• Opportunity of earning equity at Nu
• Medical Insurance
• Dental and Vision Insurance
• Life Insurance and AD&D
• Extended maternity and paternity leaves
• Nucleo - Our learning platform of courses
• NuLanguage - Our language learning program
• NuCare - Our mental health and wellness assistance program
• 401K
• Saving Plans - Health Saving Account and Flexible Spending Account
• Work‑from‑home Allowance
• Relocation Assistance Package, if applicable.

Work Model for this Role

Hybrid 2-3 times/week: Our hybrid work model brings us to the office at least twice a week, on strategic days designed to maximize team connection and collaboration. For more details, visit https://building.nubank.com/nu-hybrid-work-model/

Locations:

This role is available in any of our North American offices (Palo Alto, USA; Miami, USA; Durham, USA; Toronto, CAN)

Our recruitment process may involve the use of artificial intelligence–enabled tools, such as automated interview transcription and analysis, to support the evaluation process. Artificial intelligence is not used to make final hiring decisions; all decisions are made by human reviewers.

By submitting an application, I acknowledge that I have read and understand the Nubank Candidate Privacy Notice.

Nubank Candidate Privacy Notice