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Tala provides financial services to the global underbanked using next generation mobile technology and data science.
The Role
Leads Tala’s Machine Learning Engineering team in building and operating platforms for model development, real-time inference, streaming features, batch processing, deployment, monitoring, and production reliability. Manages and develops 4–6 engineers, owns delivery and prioritization, provides architectural leadership, improves engineering practices and SLOs, and partners with Data Science, Data Engineering, Product, Credit, and Business Development teams.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Tala
Tala is AI-native credit infrastructure for the global majority, combining proprietary risk intelligence with an expanding network of capital and distribution partners to power credit access at scale. Backed by more than $500 million in funding, Tala has distributed more than $7 billion in capital to more than 13 million customers across Africa, Latin America, and Asia—building one of the most robust datasets on thin-file borrowers anywhere in the world. Our mission is simple yet bold: to unleash the economic power of the global majority. We are looking for daring, data-driven leaders passionate about building the trust and credit infrastructure for the global majority.
Our pioneering work and proven impact have earned us consistent recognition, including being named to:
CNBC’s Disruptor 50 for five years.
CNBC’s World's Top Fintech Companies for two consecutive years.
Forbes’ Fintech 50 list for nine consecutive years.
Visionary investors, persuaded by the economic power of the global majority, have committed half a billion dollars in equity and debt to Tala's success.
Given the global nature of our team, we operate on a remote-first approach with office hubs in Santa Monica, CA (HQ); Nairobi, Kenya; Mexico City, Mexico; Manila, the Philippines; and Bangalore, India.
Most Talazens join us because they connect with our mission. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Tala, we’d love to hear from you!
The Role
We’re looking for a Manager, Machine Learning Engineering to lead Tala’s ML Platform team. This person will manage a team of Machine Learning Engineers responsible for building the platforms, frameworks, and infrastructure that enable our Data Science teams to securely train, deploy, monitor, and operate machine learning models at scale.
This is a player-coach management role. You’ll be responsible for developing and growing the team while also providing enough technical leadership to guide architecture, engineering practices, reliability, and production systems. The role has a particular focus on real-time machine learning inference and streaming data systems, as well as the platforms that support batch model development and deployment.
What You'll Do
- Manage and develop a team of 4–6 Machine Learning Engineers across mid-to-senior levels.
- Hire, source, interview, and close strong MLE talent.
- Establish clear expectations, provide regular feedback, and create development plans for direct reports.
- Coach engineers toward growth and promotion while addressing performance gaps directly and thoughtfully.
- Create opportunities for engineers to take on challenging projects and grow their technical leadership.
- Set quarterly goals and ensure the team consistently delivers against them.
- Own prioritization across product roadmap work, run-the-business activities, and operational excellence.
- Balance team capacity across new development, maintenance, technical debt, and production support.
- Improve team productivity by reducing context switching and delegating effectively.
- Partner with engineers and technical leads to estimate and scope complex work.
- Guide the development of platforms and frameworks that allow Data Scientists and Analysts to explore data, develop features, and train, test, deploy, and monitor ML models.
- Provide technical leadership across model infrastructure, real-time inference, streaming feature extraction, batch processing, and production ML systems.
- Drive strong engineering practices around testing, automation, observability, fault tolerance, infrastructure-as-code, and deployment.
- Own and improve SLOs, on-call health, capacity planning, reliability, and incident response.
- Review technical designs and help drive architectural standards and technical debt reduction.
- Work closely with Data Science, Data Engineering, Data Platform, Product, Credit, and Business Development teams.
- Translate business and technical needs into scalable ML platform solutions.
- Coordinate dependencies and delivery across multiple engineering and data teams.
- Help create structure and clarity in an environment where priorities and requirements can evolve.
Lead & Grow the Team
Own Engineering Delivery
Provide Technical Leadership
Partner Across the Organization
What You'll Need
- 2+ years of directly managing engineers, including hiring, performance management, coaching, and career development.
- Experience managing a team through at least one full performance cycle.
- Demonstrated ability to coach engineers toward promotion and address underperformance effectively.
- Experience owning team goals, prioritization, estimation, and delivery.
- Experience with production on-call, incident response, and capacity planning.
- Willingness to be actively involved in sourcing, interviewing, and closing engineering talent.
- 6+ years of backend software engineering experience in consumer-scale applications.
- At least 3 years of hands-on Python experience.
- Experience building and operating machine learning or causal inference systems in production.
- Earlier-career experience personally building and deploying ML models or ML infrastructure.
- Ability to participate in technical architecture and system-design discussions and provide technical direction without needing to be the primary coder.
- Strong understanding of software quality, security, reliability, testing, and production operations.
- Languages: Python, SQL
- Machine Learning: Jupyter, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, XGBoost, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Hugging Face
- Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, Docker
- Streaming: Kafka, Kinesis, Beam, Flink, Spark Streaming
- Batch Processing: Airflow, Metaflow
- Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Snowflake, Druid, and/or similar technologies
- APIs: REST, GraphQL, gRPC, Protocol Buffers
- Production Engineering: DevOps, SLOs, monitoring/observability, on-call, capacity planning, root-cause analysis
- ML/Analytics: Machine learning, causal inference, scalable algorithms
Management Experience
Technical Experience
Technical Skills
We’re particularly interested in candidates with experience across:
Our vision is to build a new financial ecosystem where everyone can participate on equal footing and access the tools they need to be financially healthy. We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse global team that represents a multitude of backgrounds, cultures, and experience. We hire talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
Skills Required
- 2+ years of direct engineering management experience, including hiring, performance management, coaching, and career development
- Experience managing a team through at least one full performance cycle
- Experience coaching engineers toward promotion and addressing underperformance
- Experience owning team goals, prioritization, estimation, and delivery
- Experience with production on-call, incident response, and capacity planning
- Willingness to source, interview, and close engineering talent
- 6+ years of backend software engineering experience in consumer-scale applications
- At least 3 years of hands-on Python experience
- Experience building and operating machine learning or causal inference systems in production
- Earlier-career experience building and deploying machine learning models or machine learning infrastructure
- Ability to participate in technical architecture and system-design discussions and provide technical direction
- Strong understanding of software quality, security, reliability, testing, and production operations
- Experience with Python and SQL
- Experience with machine learning tools including Jupyter, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, XGBoost, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Hugging Face
- Experience with AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, and Docker
- Experience with streaming technologies including Kafka, Kinesis, Beam, Flink, and Spark Streaming
- Experience with batch-processing tools including Airflow and Metaflow
- Experience with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Snowflake, Druid, or similar databases
- Experience with REST, GraphQL, gRPC, or Protocol Buffers
- Experience with DevOps, SLOs, monitoring, observability, on-call, capacity planning, and root-cause analysis
- Experience with scalable machine-learning algorithms and causal inference
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The Company
What We Do
Tala is a global technology company on a mission to build a financial system that works for everyone. More than 6 million people have borrowed through Tala’s smartphone app, which provides instant credit scoring, lending, and other personalized financial services in emerging markets. We are present in the United States, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and India.
Why Work With Us
We are on a global mission to serve the underserved. We use mobile technology and data science to make financial services simple, inclusive, and accessible. We are expanding across product offerings, countries and crypto and are looking for people who have an entrepreneurial spirit and are passionate about the mission.
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