Staff Machine Learning Engineer (MLOps)

EMPOWER OVERVIEW

Empower is shaking up an outdated financial system by providing real opportunity for our customers: the opportunity to get the cash they need, to access fair credit, and to change their financial story. Today, we’re helping millions of people find financial security through machine learning models that evaluate creditworthiness using a more inclusive lens and mobile-first products: Cash Advance, Thrive line of credit, and Petal credit cards. Tomorrow? Creating even more financial paths for our customers (and their wallets) to succeed.

This year, Empower ranked #65 on Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies list — our third year in a row cracking the top 100 — and was named by Forbes as one of the 25 Next Billion-Dollar Startups for 2024. Empower was also featured by Forbes on America’s Best Startup Employers list in 2023, and our Thrive line of credit product was named by Fast Company as one of 2022’s Next Big Things in Tech.

Empower is backed by Sequoia Capital, Blisce, and Icon Ventures. Ready to grow your impact and accelerate your career? Take a look at our open roles — we can’t wait to meet you.

The Opportunity: Staff Machine Learning Engineer (MLOps)

As our first Machine Learning Engineer focusing on MLOps, you will play a pivotal role in operationalizing our ML models, ensuring they are scalable, reliable, and easy to monitor. You’ll work closely with our data scientists, server engineers, and infrastructure teams to build feature stores for model development, facilitate model refit/retrain iterations, enhance model deployment (CI/CD) pipeline, as well as strengthen model monitoring.

Empower is a remote-first company. We drive connectivity through regular company offsites. Travel for company offsites is expected at a minimum 2 times a year.

How You'll Make an Impact

• Design and Implement Scalable MLOps Infrastructure: Develop and maintain the infrastructure required for the entire machine learning lifecycle, from data ingestion and model training to deployment and monitoring.

• Build and Maintain Feature Stores: Design and implement robust feature stores to ensure consistent and efficient feature management across all ML models

• Automate ML Workflows: Develop and implement CI/CD pipelines for machine learning models, automating the deployment and monitoring process.

• Implement Resource Management and Orchestration: Utilize tools like Kubernetes, Airflow, or similar technologies to effectively manage and orchestrate ML resources.

• Monitor and Debug Production ML Systems: Establish comprehensive monitoring and alerting systems to ensure the health and performance of deployed ML models.

• Collaborate with Data Scientists and Server Engineers: Work closely with data scientists and server engineers to understand their infrastructure needs and provide effective solutions.

Why You're a Great Fit

• 3+ years of experience in MLOps, ML Engineering, or DevOps for machine learning.

• Experience with machine learning algorithms and model development process.

• Strong expertise in cloud platforms (AWS or Azure) for ML deployment.

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, Jenkins) for ML.

• Strong knowledge of model monitoring tools (e.g., Evidently AI, MLflow).

• Hands-on experience with orchestration frameworks (e.g., Airflow, Kubeflow).

• Familiarity with Pyspark and Databricks is a plus.

•Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation) is a plus.

Don't meet every qualification? If you're excited about this challenge and driven to innovate, we still want to hear from you!

What You'll Get at Empower

• Meaningful Ownership: Competitive salary and generous equity in a profitable, fast growing company.

• Complete Support: 100% coverage for medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, plus a generous WFH reimbursement.

• High-Impact Teams: The chance to thrive in a small, focused team where your contributions directly shape outcomes for our business and customers.

• Remote First: A virtual first environment built on trust and outcomes.

• Team Connection: Twice-yearly company onsites where we come together to connect, learn, and build for the future (our last few have been in San Diego, Vail, and Flagstaff)!

• Growth Path: Ongoing opportunities for development in a dynamic, supportive, and creative environment.

The Empower Way

The Empower Way is one where bold ambition meets an owner mindset, where open dialogue and spirited debate are encouraged, and where everyone works together to put our customers first. We believe diverse voices lead to the best ideas, and we foster an environment where every individual is valued, heard, and supported as part of one unified team working to change lives and build a more inclusive future.

If that sounds like you, join us and be part of a team that's helping millions of people reshape their financial futures.