The role

We are seeking a Principal Data Scientist with very strong engineering skills (or a software engineer with deep expertise in machine learning) to drive SoFi’s technical capabilities in ML and AI across multiple teams. In this role you will report directly to the VP of Data and accomplish high-impact work across multiple teams, divisions and organizations. Beyond direct impact on ML and AI products, your responsibility will include mentorship, leadership in shaping standards for technical design and execution, hiring practices, and operational excellence.

The ideal candidate is very strong on implementation and methods and equally motivated to develop strategies and plans. You are comfortable making opinionated decisions and very often those decisions prove to be useful. You will work closely with engineering, product, data science, executive teams and more to drive vision, strategy and execution.

What you’ll do:

• Collaborate with multiple teams to build ML / AI products to bring value to our members. You will have opportunities to do significant hands-on development work on ML / AI systems.
• Serve as the tech lead and architect for ML and AI across multiple business units and drive technical standards company-wide.
• Advocate for continually-improving practices and drive inspiring standards for hiring, coding and collaboration.
• Develop, apply, and socialize impactful technology, engineering principles and concepts.
• Work across teams at SoFi to help develop & enhance products and systems.
• Provide technical mentorship to data scientists and continually improve our data-driven culture.
• Lead & present in broad forums with senior technical leaders across the company.

What you’ll need:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or other technical field from a fully-accredited college or university
• 8+ years of impactful experience, with significant depth in the methods and implementation details of machine learning and AI. If you have less experience but feel this is the right job for you, we want to hear what has been exceptional about your faster journey.
• Expert understanding and hands-on experience building, integrating and operating production data products and infrastructure. Your focus is data, but you have very solid software engineering skills. The lessons you have learned in your career so far will help accelerate the team.
• Deep hands-on experience with major technologies such as Airflow, DBT, git, docker/k8s, BI tools, Spark, AWS, Snowflake, sklearn, TF, PyTorch, etc. You also are aware of ML/AI SaaS tools in industry and have a perspective on where the industry is going. No one is an expert in everything but you have real breadth and depth.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and a desire to share the right information with the right people. You do not need to be a polished speaker, you just need to be great at collaborating and helping others understand your work.

Who you are:

• You have a very high sense of motivation and agency in your work. In situations where some might get blocked by challenges you find paths forward.
• You work and play well with others; SoFi is a highly collaborative workplace and a melting pot of diverse talent. You make others feel safe to bring their entire selves to work and foster a positive environment around you.
• You care personally about your teammates and you know that sometimes the best way to express that care is to challenge them directly to get to the truth.
• You thrive on developing creative solutions to hard problems.
• You take pride in your craft and seek practical excellence, meaning you hold a high bar for the quality of your work while remaining pragmatic about how to maximize your total impact over time.
• You are customer-obsessed and have an affinity for solving complex problems and shipping impactful features.
• You are confident in asking difficult questions at all levels of the organization.
• You listen and eagerly accept feedback, knowing that it can help you grow.
• You love learning - you have the ability to quickly and independently acquire proficiency in new languages and technologies.
• You are either experienced with finance / fintech or you are enthusiastic to learn and grow in this space.
• Mentoring others motivates you. You consistently find ways to encourage technical growth of those around you.
• Helping people live better lives with the help of technology motivates and inspires you to do your best work.