Applied Machine Learning (ML) Manager

Description

SentiLink stops more than 150,000 fraud attempts and verifies more than 3 million identities every day to protect both institutions and consumers. The problems we work on are challenging, and solving them takes deep domain expertise, rigorous analysis, and a willingness to dig into the details.

At SentiLink, you'll work alongside smart, highly collaborative colleagues who respect each other's time and judgment, take ownership, and follow through on their commitments. Together, we do truly meaningful work protecting the identities of innocent consumers and flagging the fraudsters attempting to exploit them.

We're well capitalized and growing quickly. We already serve 13 of the top 15 U.S. banks, we're expanding into new markets, and we're backed by Craft Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NYCA, and Max Levchin. We've been named to the Forbes Fintech 50 and as a 2026 FICO Industry Vanguard Decision Award Winner . We were also the first company to go live with the electronic Consent Based Social Security Number Verification (eCBSV) service, and we've testified before the U.S. Congress on the future of identity.

We want SentiLink to be the best place you've ever worked. We offer generous benefits and support a range of working arrangements, from fully remote to in-office. We are a digital-first company with strong collaboration across the U.S. and India, and we meet in person regularly to build relationships. We have offices in Austin, San Francisco, New York City, Seattle (Bellevue), Los Angeles, and Chicago in the U.S., and in Gurugram (Delhi) and Bengaluru in India.

Role:

SentiLink builds the fraud detection and identity verification models much of the US financial system runs on. As an Applied ML Manager, you own a core area end to end.

You'll lead a team of 4 applied ML scientists, 6 by the end of 2026, all experienced and technically deep enough to challenge you daily. This is a people management role that stays close to the work: you'll coach, review code, and contribute directly where it matters most.

Data science drives product decisions here, and the growth path from this role is strategic leadership in both the product and ML domains you own. We use AI across all of our work, are exploring where it belongs in the products themselves, and hold a hard line on AI safety and data governance.

Technologies: Python 3, PostgreSQL, AWS, XGBoost, scikit-learn, pandas, Elasticsearch and OpenSearch, Neo4j, MLflow, Flyte, and use of modern LLM tooling.

Responsibilities

• Directly manage a team of applied ML scientists, 4 today and growing to 6 by the end of 2026, and help set the engineering and modeling practices they work by.
• Own execution for your area: priorities, delivery, and the results your team produces.
• Coach and mentor team members through model development, experimentation, and technical decision making, and remain hands-on where it matters most, including code review and production systems.
• Partner with senior leadership, Product, Engineering, and Risk to prioritize work and deliver impactful ML solutions.
• Communicate progress, tradeoffs, and results clearly, and grow into representing your domain in product strategy discussions.
• Develop and improve SentiLink's fraud detection and identity models across the full lifecycle: data acquisition, feature engineering, labeling strategy, model training, experimentation, production deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
• Research emerging fraud patterns, build new ML capabilities for identity verification and financial risk, and design analyses that inform product and business decisions.
• Use AI throughout your team's work, help push the boundary on what that unlocks, and contribute to our exploration of where AI belongs inside the products themselves.

Requirements

• 6+ years of industry experience applying machine learning or statistics to real-world problems, including 3+ years directly managing machine learning or data science teams. Experience at high-growth startups preferred.
• Experience leading ML or data science teams in fraud, identity, fintech, banking, financial services, payments, or adjacent risk-focused domains, and interest in growing into ownership of product direction for that domain.
• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, or another quantitative discipline.
• Demonstrated success developing and deploying production machine learning models, plus experience writing production-quality Python code and tests.
• Strong practical ML and applied statistics knowledge: able to scope solutions quickly with standard tooling and go deep where it pays off.
• Comfortable working end to end, with a track record of measurable business impact: planning, defining success criteria, getting buy-in, building the solution, and delivering it, whether in production, in a deck, or as strategy.
• Comfortable with modern LLMs and AI-assisted development workflows and interested in pushing them further. Sound judgment when working with sensitive data under real information security and data governance constraints.
• Strong communicator who enjoys mentoring others while remaining technically hands-on. Detail oriented and thoughtful, someone we can rely on to make high-stakes calls while thriving on varied, open-ended, high-impact problems.
• Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States and must live in the United States.
• Compensation:
• $200,000-$250,000/year + equity + benefits

Benefits

• Employer paid group health insurance for you and your dependents
• 401(k) plan with employer match (or equivalent for non US-based roles)
• Flexible paid time off
• Regular company-wide in-person events
• Home office stipend, and more!
• Corporate Values:
• Follow Through
• Deep Understanding
• Whatever It Takes
• Do Something Smart