Principal ML Engineer, Applied AI

WHO WE ARE

TIFIN builds AI-powered financial technology that personalizes and improves financial advice across consumers, advisors, workplaces, and institutions. Our modular platform embeds finance-tuned AI to deliver dynamic, tailored guidance at scale—without added complexity. Combining proprietary models, specialized data, and a fast-paced engineering culture, we create secure, compliant tools that power real outcomes. Other differentiators include:

• Speed: Our ability to stand up businesses at 2-4x the speed of typical fintech companies (building MVPs in 3 months and production-ready products in 6-12 months)
• Track Record: Previous exits include 55ip (acquired by J.P. Morgan) and Paralel
• Strategic Partners: Partners include J.P. Morgan, Franklin Templeton, Morningstar, Broadridge, Hamilton Lane, Motive Partners and SEI.
• World-Class Team: Complimentary financial services & technical expertise from Google, Microsoft, Uber, PayPal, eBay, Techstars, BlackRock, LPL, Franklin Templeton, Morgan Stanley, Broadridge and more.

OUR VALUES: Go with your GUT

• Grow at the Edge. We are driven by personal growth fueled by a beginner’s mindset. We get out of our comfort zone and keep egos aside. With self-awareness and integrity we strive to be the best we can possibly be. No excuses.
• Understanding through Listening and Speaking the Truth. We communicate with authenticity, precision and integrity to create a shared understanding. We identify opportunities within constraints and propose solutions in service to the team.
• I Win for Teamwin. We believe in staying within our genius zones to succeed and taking accountability for driving results. We are all individual contributors first and always thinking about what can be better.

ROLE OVERVIEW

As a Principal ML Engineer on the Applied AI team, you will own AI efforts for one of our product lines as the technical leader. We are looking for individuals who have experience building generative AI products where LLM models are a core component, as well as technical leadership experience. This is an individual contributor and technical leadership role reporting into the Head of AI.

PROJECTS

• AI Agent Orchestrator: Multi-agent systems that automate tasks and streamline workflows, driving measurable improvements in operational efficiency.
• Human-in-the-Loop Collaboration: AI-powered co-pilot for advisors and other user personas, streamlining workflows across business workflows such as prospecting, conversion, onboarding, and client servicing.
• Fine-Tuned Models: Purpose-tuned models for financial services to handle complex, multi-turn interactions with actionability in low-latency environments.
• Seamless Legacy Tech Integration: Designed to navigate and optimize legacy systems for streamlined operations with computer use models.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Define and drive the AI strategy that drives TIFIN’s innovation and growth
• Collaborate with product team and software engineering team to build end-to-end product systems.
• Zero-to-one product development: rapidly prototype, evaluate, integrate, and test new product features in collaboration with product and engineering teams.
• Develop and integrate agentic workflow systems that empower AI agents to operate autonomously, enabling proactive decision-making and dynamic interactions.
• Design and fine-tune open source and proprietary LLMs for various tasks such as answering questions, summarization, reasoning and planning, etc.
• Apply reinforcement learning techniques—including reinforcement learning fine tuning (e.g., PPO, DPO, GRPO)—to continuously optimize model performance.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

• 7+ years of experience (post-MS/Ph.D) in applied AI engineering, including 2+ years as a technical leader
• Experience shipping generative AI products powered by LLMs: designing and implementing agentic workflows that enable autonomous AI behaviors, leveraging the latest state-of-the-art research
• Resilience and adaptability - experience working at early-stage startups or building 0-1 is a plus

COMPENSATION RANGE

$200,000 - $250,000 USD

In addition to cash compensation, a meaningful equity stake is a significant part of the overall package. Package also includes benefits program eligibility: Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits and flexible PTO.

TIFIN is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and values the multitude of talents and perspectives that a diverse workforce brings. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status.