Staff ML Engineer — Platform & Credit Underwriting Lead

Kikoff; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 307,000 - 352,000; Full time

Job summary

Kikoff is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer in San Francisco to define the technical direction for ML. You will own the ML platform, set the modeling roadmap, and collaborate with Product, Risk, Finance, and Engineering to deliver high-impact models and governance.

The role is hands-on with company-level impact, focusing on underwriting, risk, and personalization, and requires leadership, mentorship, and deep ML expertise.

Qualifications

• 8+ years software or ML engineering experience, including 5+ years building, deploying, and operating ML systems in production.
• Ownership of ML systems with measurable business impact at scale; experience in consumer lending, credit underwriting, fraud, or payments preferred.
• Expert-level Python; strong system design and software fundamentals.
• Experience with feature stores, model registries, training/evaluation/serving, monitoring, and retraining.
• Hands-on design of ML platform components and pragmatic build-vs-buy decisions.

Responsibilities

• Define multi-quarter ML strategy for underwriting, risk, and personalization with cross-functional alignment.
• Own ML platform including feature stores, pipelines, registry, serving, and monitoring; set production standards.
• Lead flagship modeling projects from problem framing to validation, launch, and iteration.
• Establish model governance with risk, compliance, and legal; ensure explainability and audit readiness.
• Set experimentation standards linking offline metrics to real-world outcomes.
• Mentor engineers and partner with product/ Biz leadership to translate goals into technical bets.

Skills

Python

Software engineering

System design

ML lifecycle

Feature stores

Model registries

Evaluation frameworks

PyTorch

AWS/GCP

Docker

Kubernetes

MLOps

CI/CD

Ruby on Rails

Model governance

Experimentation

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering/Math

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Job description

Kikoff is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer in San Francisco to define the technical direction for ML. You will own the ML platform, set the modeling roadmap, and collaborate with Product, Risk, Finance, and Engineering to deliver high-impact models and governance.

The role is hands-on with company-level impact, focusing on underwriting, risk, and personalization, and requires leadership, mentorship, and deep ML expertise.