Hybrid Mid-Level Data Scientist / AI Engineer (Remote) Mid-Level Data Scientist / AI Engineer (Remote)

What are we all about?

Lifecheq is a fintech company specialising in personal finance, operating throughout South Africa. Our technology touches consumers, financial advisors and large enterprise institutions. The vision for our advice platform is to become one of the most transformative technology platforms in South Africa’s financial services landscape. In this role, you will be a pivotal player at an important point in our journey. Our business is funded by institutional investors including Futuregrowth, African Rainbow Capital and Naspers Foundry.

The team

Lifecheq is an innovator in the financial services industry. The Machine Learning (ML) squad’s mission is to keep Lifecheq at the leading edge. The squad uses data, machine learning and quantitative techniques to build intelligent products that differentiate our platform. The ML squad both owns and develops products from scratch, and delivers value to other product squads at Lifecheq. We have deployed APIs for computer vision-assisted client onboarding, product pricing competitiveness optimisation, and LLM-assisted sales flows.

Our team prioritises values like:

• Generative drive
• Autonomy
• Technical mastery
• Continuous learning

In the ML squad, you'll be part of a team of four engineers that iterates quickly on new ideas, testing and validating innovative solutions. You'll have the opportunity to experiment, explore new approaches, and collaborate closely with colleagues across the organisation to deliver value with these ideas.

What You Will Do

The ML squad is looking for a strong AI engineer/ data scientist to join our team. Our squad has a particular focus on developing and maturing Large Language Model (LLM) applications within the organisation. The squad tackles many other use cases- like computer vision, predictive financial modelling, fraud detection etc.

This is a mid-level technical role, and we're looking for a motivated and highly-skilled developer, and effective collaborator. An excellent Python programmer with a robust AI/ML background will stand out from the crowd.

You will be responsible for prototyping and validating new ML use cases, as well as maintaining and maturing existing pipelines. Our current focus is more weighted towards prototype generation and validation. You will write tested, production-grade code and deploy apps and pipelines in our cloud environment. We expect you to rigorously evaluate prototypes, and collaborate to quickly iterate and refine ideas.

What Skills You’ll Bring

• Outstanding skills as a Python developer
• Outstanding skills and a minimum of 2 years’ experience writing production-grade code as a data scientist or AI engineer
• Or an exceptional portfolio showcasing your ability (side projects are welcome!)
• Extensive familiarity with development best practices - version control, functional testing, automation, infrastructure as code
• Familiarity with machine learning pipelines
• Ability to adapt to evolving tools, frameworks and languages

What Will Set You Apart From Others

• Excellent idea generation and critical thinking
• A willingness to constructively challenge ideas and engage in healthy debates
• Professional experience with LLM applications
• Professional experience with computer vision applications
• Outstanding cloud engineering skills, or extensive experience with
• AWS
• Terraform
• Databricks
• PostgreSQL
• Professional experience developing and maintaining production-grade machine learning pipelines
• Experience with TypeScript or Clojure
• The ability to collaborate effectively across teams
• Professional product development experience
• An eagerness to experiment with new tech stacks and continually expand your technical skill set
• Excitement about Lifecheq's domain: personal financial advice

What It's Like To Work Here

You will collaborate with agile cross-functional squads, which include product managers, backend engineers, financial experts, and designers. Each squad has a clear focus on customer-centric goals and the autonomy to achieve them, enabling you to see the direct impact of your work on our customers.

We take your professional growth seriously! We will work with you to map out your success plan and provide an opportunity to fast-track your career while making a genuine difference.

Flexibility and Work-Life Balance: We are offering a permanent role or a renewable, one-year contract position. Our fully-online and remote setup allows you to work from anywhere, with all teams communicating and collaborating via Slack and the Google Suite. We trust you to manage your time, with core hours from 10:00 to 16:00 (GMT+2), so you have the flexibility to structure your day around what works best for you.

Vetting & Onboarding Process

Apply and attach your CV with our Freshteam job posting. Should your initial application be successful we'll contact you to set up the next steps. Next steps:

• 30 minute intro chat
• Up to 90 minute pair programming session
• 60 minute team fit interview with our CTO and engineers