Staff Software Engineer

The role

We are building a new optimization and AI engineering team with the mission of bringing the value of AI to SoFi Members. This work will play a key role in increasing the revenue of our Loans Platform business by developing new solutions to improve the efficiency of our loan sales. The ideal candidate will have a deep understanding of mathematical optimization and ML, a curiosity for AI, and a demonstrated ability of building and owning high performing production systems. At SoFi, we pride ourselves on the collaboration between Data Science, Product, Design, and Engineering and so you will be involved in the entire product lifecycle, from ideation through building, deploying and continual improvement and evolution. We also pride ourselves on a philosophy of continuous learning, and you should likewise be committed to furthering your own career growth as well as to providing mentorship for your fellow team members.

Key responsibilities

• Drive technical architecture, design decisions and cross-functional discussions for the product


• Deliver highly available and scalable services in a production environment


• Partner closely with data scientists to understand, implement, and productionalize mathematical optimization, ML, and AI models


• Lead the design, development and testing of systems


• Lead code and system design reviewsHelp translate product requirements into user stories and technical solutions


• Mentor other engineers, support the technical culture, and help grow the team


• Generate ideas for new initiatives and technologiesCommunicate with project leads, product managers and other software developers


• Consistently demonstrate extremely high levels of technical knowledge, ingenuity, and creativity.


• Develop and apply advanced technologies, engineering principles, theories, and conceptsBroad knowledge about the design and operation of systems outside of specialty


• Take initiative and produce timely results in a fast-paced and sometimes ambiguous environment

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Industrial Engineering, or related field


• 8+ years programming experience on a modern stack


• Our core stack is Java/ Kotlin/ Spring / AWS/ PostgreSQL, and we run on Kubernetes in a service oriented architecture. Python is required for our new optimization and AI stack


• Proven experience building, deploying, and maintaining production-level Python microservices through their entire lifecycle


• Hands-on experience with optimization solvers and libraries (e.g., Gurobi, CPLEX, Google OR-Tools, PuLP, Pyomo). Familiarity with Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) is a plus


• Experience working with applications that leverage ML and Large Language Models (LLMs), such as integrating LLMs, designing prompts, or exploring their practical applications.


• You should have a strong understanding of relational databases and ORMs


• You should have worked on a SOA or microservice-based application


• Strong sense of ownership; driving a project from inception to completion


• Pragmatic approach towards handling tech debt versus shipping new features


• Experience working in a collaborative coding environment, refining designs together, working through code reviews and managing pull requests