Senior Data Scientist, Methodologies

Tilt Finance; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Virtual-first teamwork

Competitive pay

Health plans

Leadership exposure

Paid global onsites

Growth opportunities

Job summary

Tilt is hiring a Senior Data Scientist to join the Methodologies group. You will build and advance foundational modeling approaches, including deep learning, transformers, and representation learning on real financial data.

You will own projects end to end and work with a small team of data scientists and engineers to translate research into practical ML solutions for credit decisioning and customer behavior.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building and training deep learning models.
• Experience applying ML to real-world problems, ideally in financial services or credit.
• Ability to translate research ideas into production-ready systems.

Responsibilities

• Build, train and evaluate deep learning models on financial data.
• Ship models and components into existing ML pipelines to improve credit modeling and loss prediction.
• Own projects end to end, from hypothesis to a deployed model with guidance from team leads.
• Collaborate with data scientists, engineers, and product partners to turn results into practical solutions.
• Run representation learning experiments, including pretraining and fine-tuning, on real financial data.
• Share findings and help peers adopt new deep learning methods.
• Measure impact of models by improving outcomes for Tilt's customers and partners.
• Leverage agentic development tools to accelerate experimentation and feature engineering.

Skills

Deep learning

Model evaluation

Experiment design

Communication

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

Join the Tilt team

At Tilt, we see a side of people that traditional lenders miss. Our mobile-first products and machine learning-powered credit models look beyond credit scores, using over 250 real-time financial signals to recognize real potential. With millions of customers worldwide, we're not just changing how people access financial products — we're creating a new credit system that backs the working, whatever they're working toward.

The opportunity

At Tilt, we're constantly exploring new ways to understand financial behavior and reduce risk. The work you do in this role will go directly into the foundational models we're building for our products.

We're looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join our Methodologies group — a role focused on building and advancing foundational modeling approaches. You'll build and test deep learning methods such as transformers to improve how we understand financial data and make lending decisions.

This is a great role for someone who's deeply curious about new modeling techniques and wants to see their ideas make a real difference. You'll work with a small, experienced team of data scientists and engineers, taking projects from first idea to working model on financial data challenges — from credit decisioning to customer behavior!

You'll also be at the forefront of how data science is practiced in the age of AI agents. Our team builds with agentic tools every day, and you'll use them in your own work and help build the specialized agents that speed up both DS and business workflows.

We're looking for someone who enjoys learning, experimenting, and collaborating — a person who can connect technical exploration to meaningful business impact. If you're excited by applying new methodologies in ways that help people access fairer credit, you'll fit right in.

How you'll make an impact

• Build, train and evaluate deep learning models on Tilt's financial data.

• Ship models and model components that plug into Tilt's existing ML pipelines to improve credit modeling and loss prediction.

• Own your projects end to end, from hypothesis to a model in use, with general direction from the team's leads.

• Work closely with data scientists, engineers, and product partners to turn your results into practical solutions.

• Run representation learning experiments — including pretraining and fine-tuning — on real financial data, with a clear design up front and an honest read on what worked.

• Share findings and help peers pick up new deep learning methods.

• Measure the impact of your models not just by accuracy, but by how they improve outcomes for Tilt's customers and partners.

• Use agentic development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex) to speed up experimentation, feature engineering and model iteration.

• Build and improve specialized agents that support DS workflows.

Why you're a great fit

• Hands-on experience building and training deep learning models

• Comfort working with modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar).

• Experience applying ML to real-world problems, ideally in financial services (credit, lending, payments, or banking).

• Experience taking a project from an open question to a measurable business outcome.

• Clear, thoughtful communication — you can explain technical ideas in ways others can engage with.

• Bonus: hands-on experience building with LLMs or agent frameworks, or excitement to learn. You see agents as a way to multiply what a small, senior team can do.

Don't meet every qualification? We care about potential over your past. If you're bringing ambition and drive to what we're building, we want to hear from you.

What you'll get at Tilt

• Virtual-first teamwork: The Tilt team is collaborating across 14 countries, 12 time zones, and counting. You'll get started with a WFH office reimbursement.

• Competitive pay: We're big on potential, and it's reflected in our competitive compensation packages and generous equity.

• Complete support: Find flexible health plans at every premium level, and substantial subsidies that stand up to global standards.

• Visibility is yours: You can count on direct exposure to our leadership team — we're a team where good ideas travel quickly.

• Paid global onsites: Magic happens IRL: we gather twice yearly to reconnect over shared meals or kayaking adventures. (We’ve visited Vail, San Diego, and Mexico City, to name a few.)

• Impact is recognized: Growth opportunities follow your contributions, not rigid promotion timelines.

The Tilt Way

We're looking for people who chase excellence and impact. Those who stand behind their work, celebrating the wins and learning from the missteps equally. We foster an environment where every voice is valued and mutual respect is non-negotiable — brilliant jerks need not apply. We're in this together, working to expand access to fair credit and prove that people are incredible. When you join us, it's not just another day at the [virtual] office, you're helping millions of hardworking people reach better financial futures.

You're pushing ahead in your career? We can get behind that. Join us in building the credit system that people deserve.