We're seeking a Head of Machine Learning to own and scale the ML function at Prodigal. This is the senior-most ML role in the company — partnering directly with the CTO as a peer technical leader, defining the multi-year ML vision, building and leading a world-class team, and translating cutting-edge research into production systems that move the needle for over 100 customers and millions of consumers. You'll set the bar for technical excellence, hire and develop the next generation of ML leaders, and shape what consumer finance intelligence looks like over the next decade. If you've operated at this level before — or are ready to step into it at a company where ML is the engine of the product — we want to talk.

Responsibilities:

• Own the ML function end-to-end — vision, roadmap, team, delivery, and measurable business impact across classical ML, NLP, GenAI, and Agentic AI
• Partner with the CTO as the senior ML leader to set company-wide technical direction and shape the long-term roadmap for Prodigal's Intelligence Engine
• Build and lead a high-performing ML organization — hire, mentor, and develop ML engineers, applied scientists, and tech leads across multiple pods
• Translate research into product — drive the application of LLMs, Agentic AI, the modern NLP stack, recommendation systems, and classical ML into production systems serving 100+ customers
• Set technical standards for model development, deployment, monitoring, evaluation, and experimentation that scale across the org
• Architect data and ML infrastructure in partnership with the platform and engineering teams to support large-scale training and reliable, low-latency inference
• Communicate strategy and outcomes clearly to the founders, board, customers, and broader engineering organization
• Represent Prodigal externally — at conferences, in research collaborations, and as a senior voice in the consumer finance AI community
• Stay at the frontier of ML and GenAI research, identifying where new techniques unlock product and business advantage
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, engineering, GTM, and customer success leaders to ensure ML investment ties directly to revenue, retention, and customer outcomes

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in machine learning and software development at a tech or product company, with 4+ years leading ML teams (managing engineers and/or tech leads)
• Proven track record of shipping ML products in production at scale with measurable business impact
• Deep technical fluency across classical ML, deep learning, and the modern NLP/LLM stack — you can still go deep in design reviews, not just review at the surface
• Strong coding skills in Python. Hands-on with PyTorch, scikit-learn, Pandas, and Spark
• Demonstrated success hiring, mentoring, and growing ML talent — including team leads and senior engineers
• Strong executive communication and the ability to set technical direction with founders, peers, and the board
• A bias for outcomes — you connect model work to revenue, engagement, and operational metrics

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience as a founding ML hire, ML lead, or applied science leader at a high-growth AI/ML product company
• Background in voice AI, conversational AI, speech, NLP on unstructured text, or fintech/lending domains
• Experience with cloud services (AWS), Databricks, and building scalable, distributed systems
• Track record of running A/B testing and experimentation programs at scale
• Patents, publications, or open-source contributions; strong institutional pedigree (IIT, BITS, NIT, IISc)
• Experience scaling an ML org through a hypergrowth phase

Job Benefits

• GenAI at the core – Lead the ML function at a company where AI isn't a feature, it's the product. Shape groundbreaking work that redefines consumer finance intelligence.
• World-class team - You'll get the chance to learn from (and teach) some of the brightest and most skilled people you'll ever meet. Our team members have been part of BCG, Deloitte, EY, Blackstone, Meta, Amazon and are IIT, IIM, BITS alumnus.
• Continuous education - As relentless seekers of knowledge, we sponsor and support any training materials, books, courses, and exam fees for upskilling yourself in areas related to your role - but that's not where it ends. If you make a good case for some extra learning, we're delighted to foot the tab.
• Food at the office – Meals are on us. We won't let your stomach grumble while you hustle.
• Health insurance - Health always comes first. The health of your family is as important to us as it is to you. We offer insurance coverage for both you and your family.
• Flexible schedule - We're not a "clock in, clock out" company. Morning person? Start work while the world's still sleeping. Night owl? Ramp things up while others are winding down. You're fully trusted to create the right conditions for your own personal peak productivity. We only ask that you be available to your teammates for seamless collaboration.
• Generous leave policy - Take all the time you need to recharge your batteries - no cap on vacation here. Because a rested, relaxed, and refreshed mind is a happy and effective mind.
• Recreation & team activities – We regularly indulge in friendly football, table tennis, cooking sessions, and challenge each other to do those extra push-ups or chug that 4th drink (of course, that's Nimbu Pani).

Meet Sangram (Cofounder and CTO) and hear his vision for Prodigal: https://www.youtube.com/embed/FTWlN9fwiIA?feature=shared

The Role

We are looking for an elite engineer who builds like a hacker and communicates like a consultant. You will not just be building models in a notebook; you will be deployed to the front lines to build, architect, and ship end-to-end Agentic AI products directly for our most strategic customers.

This is a high-stakes role. You will face "tricky" customers who have vague requirements and high expectations. Your job is to translate their chaos into technical order, write production-grade code, and deploy autonomous agents that solve their actual business problems.

What You Will Do

• Build & Deploy (60%):

Design and ship full-stack AI applications. You own the pipeline from data ingestion to the LLM inference layer to the frontend interface.

Architect autonomous agentic workflows (using frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph, or custom implementations) that can reason, plan, and execute complex tasks.

Write robust, clean, and highly testable code (Python/Typescript). "It works on my machine" is not acceptable; it must work in the customer's restricted cloud environment.

Handle DevOps and MLOps constraints: Dockerizing agents, managing Kubernetes clusters, and optimizing inference latency.

• Customer Engineering (40%):

Serve as the technical face of the company for our most demanding accounts.

Navigate complex stakeholder environments. You will push back on unrealistic demands, clarify ambiguous requirements, and steer "tricky" customers toward technically feasible solutions without breaking rapport.

Translate technical constraints into business value for non-technical executives.

Generate high-quality data for our customers and ability to review the data generated by other experts. This is one of the most critical aspects of the role.

The "Must-Haves"

• Experience: 8–12 years of total engineering experience. You started as a strong Software Engineer and evolved into an AI specialist.
• Education: B.S./M.S. in Computer Science, Math, or Physics from a top-tier institution (IIT, MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, CMU, or similar global top-ranking universities).
• Deep AI Fluency: You aren't just calling APIs. You understand RAG implementation nuances, vector database optimization, fine-tuning (LoRA/PEFT), and the architecture of agentic loops.
• Production Engineering: Experience with end-to-end deployment (AWS/GCP/Azure, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform, Docker).

The "Why You" (Soft Skills)

• Thick Skin & High EQ: You don't get flustered when a customer changes their mind for the third time in a week. You can hold your ground with a CTO and explain "why not" to a CEO.
• Extreme Attention to Detail: You catch the edge cases that others miss. You obsess over error handling, retry logic in agents, and data privacy.
• Grit: You enjoy the "messy" work of integrating legacy enterprise data just as much as prompting the latest model.

What will set you apart

• Public Code: A visible GitHub footprint is very helpful. We want to see your side projects, your contributions to open source, or your experiments with LLMs. Please include your GitHub link in your application.

Tech Stack

• Languages: Python (Expert).
• AI/Data (Expertise in all is not required): PyTorch, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Pinecone/Weaviate, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, HuggingFace.
• Infra (Expertise in all is not required): Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS/GCP.

We're seeking a Machine Learning Lead to join our team in building cutting-edge products that shape the future of consumer finance. As a member of our team, you will oversee complex technical problems, build new features, and improve existing products. Our teams are constantly pushing the boundaries of applied intelligence in consumer finance, and we're looking for passionate individuals who can help us advance us further. If you're interested in leading a world-class team of engineers and researchers to work on exciting projects that have a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.

Responsibilities:

• Partner with the CTO to drive the team's goals and technical direction to pursue opportunities that make the organization more efficient
• Effectively communicate complex features and systems in detail
• Understand industry & company-wide trends to help assess & develop new technologies
• Partner with the CTO to lead long-term technical vision and roadmap for Machine Learning and the entire organization
• Suggest, collect, and synthesize requirements and create an effective feature roadmap
• Design and develop Machine learning products and services leveraging AI (LLMs, Agentic AI, classical ML, the modern NLP stack, etc)
• Architect and implement data pipelines for ML model training. Lead scalable software systems development to deploy ML models into production systems, ensuring high performance and reliability.
• Stay updated on ML research and the ever-changing Gen AI landscape, identifying opportunities for innovation.
•  Effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality solutions on time. Guide team members in contributing to ML design discussions for new projects.

Requirements:

• Extensive experience, 5+ years in software development, with a focus on machine learning and data science in a tech company. 
• Proven track record of delivering high-quality ML products in a fast-paced, agile environment.
• Deep understanding of machine learning algorithms with hands-on experience in developing and deploying machine learning models at scale.
• Strong coding skills in Python. Familiarity with machine learning libraries such as PyTorch and sci-kit-learn. Experience with data manipulation and analysis tools like Pandas and Spark.
• Strong communication and leadership skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and mentor junior engineers.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with cloud services (AWS), Databricks, and building scalable, distributed systems.

Job Benefits 

• GenAI experience – Work directly in the innovative field of GenAI, shaping groundbreaking projects that redefine consumer finance intelligence.
• World-class team - You'll get the chance to learn from (and teach) some of the brightest and most skilled people you'll ever meet. Our team members have been part of BCG, Deloitte, EY, Blackstone, Meta, Amazon and are IIT, IIM, BITS alumnus.
• Continuous education - As relentless seekers of knowledge, we sponsor and support any training materials, books, courses, and exam fees for upskilling yourself in areas related to your role - but that's not where it ends. If you make a good case for some extra learning, we're delighted to foot the tab.
• Food at the office – Meals are on us. We won't let your stomach grumble while you hustle.
• Health insurance - Health always comes first. The health of your family is as important to us as it is to you. We offer insurance coverage for both you and your family.
• Flexible schedule - We're not a "clock in, clock out" company. Morning person? Start work while the world's still sleeping. Night owl? Ramp things up while others are winding down. You're fully trusted to create the right conditions for your own personal peak productivity. We only ask that you be available to your teammates for seamless collaboration.
• Generous leave policy - Take all the time you need to recharge your batteries - no cap on vacation here. Because a rested, relaxed, and refreshed mind is a happy and effective mind.
• Recreation & team activities – We regularly indulge in friendly football, table tennis, cooking sessions, and challenge each other to do those extra push-ups or chug that 4th drink (of course, that’s Nimbu Pani).

Meet Sangram - (Cofounder and CTO) and hear his vision for Prodigal below (01:38)

In India, we have our teams based in Pune, Mumbai, Delhi and, Bangalore. We pride ourselves on being client-focused and collaborative, on the pioneering edge of technology. We also have fun. Whether it’s office happy hours, team outings, or game nights, we believe in working with people we like to hang out with.

Ideal candidate traits

If you identify as a team player and you are humble, hungry, and smart — we would love to get to know you. We believe these qualities to be vital to building a strong, productive, and collaborative work environment, where everyone is committed to achieving common goals and working towards shared success.

We are looking for people who are willing to learn from others, who can put their egos aside and prioritise the needs of the team. You should also be highly motivated, driven to succeed, and always looking for ways to improve. We value emotional intelligence, excellent communication skills, and a collaborative spirit that enables them to build strong relationships with teammates and work effectively towards shared goals.

At AlphaSense we are committed to fostering a work culture that encourages these qualities and values the contributions of team players who exhibit them. We seek to match the ambition of ideal team players by offering opportunities for personal and professional growth, providing the resources and support necessary to achieve their goals, and creating an environment where hard work, dedication, and teamwork are celebrated and rewarded. At AlphaSense we are building teams of ideal players who embody the core values of Sisu, driving the company’s success and helping us to create a positive impact on the world.

Technologies that we work with:

Frontend

ReactJS, TypeScript, Micro Frontends

Applications

NodeJS, TypeScript, GraphQL, Java 17, Spring Boot, Python, FastAPI

Backend

Java 17, Spring Boot, Python, FastAPI, Kafka

Search and AI

Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, Vector Search, ML, LLM, Pytorch, Tensorflow

Cloud architecture

AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Crossplane, Argo CD

Quality & reliability

Cypress, Selenium, Selenide, Playwright, Rest Assured, K6, Prometheus, Loki, Grafana

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If you’re looking for a challenge, if you love finding things that need interesting solutions, AlphaSense is a great place to come. It is a place for builders, for people who want to create the next thing.

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Contact us and let’s figure out together if we can find a common path. Tell us about yourself and your background in your own words.