Senior Machine Learning Engineer; ML Underwriting

Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer (ML Underwriting) – Join the Affirm team to help reinvent credit with transparency and inclusivity.

Affirm is building responsible, scalable machine learning solutions that support the company’s mission to offer honest and friendly credit. In this role you will partner with engineering, product, and risk leaders to design and scale advanced modeling approaches that drive critical decisions across the organization.

• Define and drive a multi‑year, multi‑team technical strategy for machine learning across the company, ensuring alignment with broader priorities.
• Lead the design, implementation, and scaling of advanced ML systems, setting architectural direction for complex, cross‑functional initiatives.
• Partner deeply with ML Platform, product, engineering, and risk leadership to shape long‑term modeling capabilities and identify new opportunities for ML impact.
• Provide broad technical leadership across the ML organization, mentoring senior engineers and elevating design and code quality.
• Drive clarity and alignment on ambiguous, high‑stakes technical decisions, resolving cross‑team tensions and balancing competing priorities.
• Champion operational and system excellence at the area level, owning the long‑term health, availability, and evolution of critical ML systems.

• 10+ years of experience researching, designing, deploying, and operating large‑scale, real‑time machine learning systems; a relevant PhD can count for up to 2 YOE.
• Proven record of driving technical innovation and delivering measurable business impact.
• Experience leading end‑to‑end ML system design, from data architecture and feature pipelines to model training, evaluation, and production deployment.
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks such as PyTorch and XGBoost, plus familiarity with ML tooling for orchestration, experimentation, and monitoring (e.g., Kubeflow, MLflow).
• Strong understanding of representation learning and embedding‑based modeling, including neural network‑based sequence modeling and multi‑task learning systems.
• Hands‑on expertise in large‑scale distributed ML infrastructure: streaming or batch ingestion, feature stores, training pipelines, model serving, and automated retraining.
• Strong technical leadership: defining long‑term strategy, guiding research direction, and aligning work across teams.
• Exceptional judgment, collaboration, and communication skills, with a track record of mentoring senior engineers and fostering a culture of continuous learning.
• Equivalently practical experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Pay Grade – R
• Equity Grade – 15

Base pay ranges (annual):

• CA, WA, NY, NJ, CT: $260,000 – $310,000
• All other U.S. states: $232,000 – $282,000

Benefits include 100% subsidized medical coverage, dental and vision for employees and dependents, flexible spending wallets, monthly health and wellness stipends, and an employee stock purchase plan.

Affirm is a remote‑first company. Most roles are fully remote, with occasional on‑site requirements in assigned neighborhoods.

We believe it’s on us to provide an inclusive interview experience for all, including people with disabilities, and we are happy to provide reasonable accommodations during the hiring process.
For U.S. positions in Los Angeles or San Francisco, affirm will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with local fair‑chance ordinances.

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