Staff Engineer: AI & ML at Pylon

Menlo Park, California, United States

Pylon Logo
Not SpecifiedCompensation
Senior (5 to 8 years), Expert & Leadership (9+ years)Experience Level
Full TimeJob Type
UnknownVisa
Mortgage, FinTechIndustries

Requirements

  • Strong systems engineering foundation, including building large-scale production systems at high-caliber technology companies
  • Write code that others can maintain and build on
  • Understand distributed systems, APIs, data consistency, and operational excellence
  • Have made consequential architectural decisions and lived with the results
  • Recent AI/ML product experience in the past 1-2 years, working on a product using LLMs or ML in production
  • Understand when AI is the right tool and when it's not; dealt with prompt engineering, model evaluation, or integrating third-party AI services
  • Technical judgment across problem spaces: know whether a problem needs an LLM, optimization algorithm, rules engine, or solid code
  • Comfortable evaluating build vs. buy decisions and vetting third-party tools
  • Worked on problems where the right solution wasn't obvious from the start
  • Comfort with regulated domains (ideally fintech, healthtech, or similar); understand moving fast without breaking things
  • Can absorb complex domain knowledge and apply it to technical decisions
  • Hands-on execution: build systems yourself (writing ~50% of the time), take ambiguous goals and turn them into working systems
  • Have strong opinions that you're willing to defend in a culture of vigorous discussion and debate

Responsibilities

  • Founding member of the AI team, working directly with the CTO to automate mortgage underwriting
  • Take complex, open-ended problems and figure out how to solve them using LLMs, rules engines, vendor APIs, or good code
  • Tackle hundreds of discrete verification, compliance, and validation steps in mortgage underwriting, one by one
  • Define the approach, architect the solution, write a significant portion of the code, and ship it to production
  • As the team grows, determine how to split up the work and set technical direction
  • Build production systems that work in a regulated environment, integrating with the existing mortgage engine codebase
  • Hands-on from day one, including taking an underwriter certification course in week one to understand the domain

Skills

LLMs
Rules Engine
API Integration
Systems Engineering
Production Systems
Software Architecture
Mortgage Underwriting

Pylon

Digital mortgage integration platform for businesses

About Pylon

Pylon Lending provides a digital mortgage infrastructure that allows businesses to integrate mortgage services into their products efficiently. Their platform offers APIs and pre-built UI components, enabling clients, mainly in the financial and real estate sectors, to embed a complete digital mortgage experience with minimal coding. Unlike traditional mortgage services that require extensive infrastructure, Pylon offers a customizable Software Development Kit (SDK) that covers the entire mortgage origination process, from application to closing. This approach helps clients save time and reduce costs. Pylon's goal is to simplify the mortgage process for businesses, allowing them to launch new mortgage products quickly while enhancing customer satisfaction.

New York City, New YorkHeadquarters
2022Year Founded
$8.3MTotal Funding
SEEDCompany Stage
Fintech, Financial ServicesIndustries
11-50Employees

Benefits

Medical, vision & dental
Unlimited PTO
Hardware allowance
Annual off-sites

Risks

Increased competition from fintech companies could erode Pylon's market share.
Potential regulatory changes may require costly adjustments to Pylon's platform.
Reliance on Citi's trading desk for liquidity poses partnership risk.

Differentiation

Pylon offers a fully digital mortgage experience via APIs and pre-built UI components.
Freddie Mac approval enhances Pylon's credibility in the mortgage industry.
Pylon's platform allows quick integration of mortgage services, reducing time and cost.

Upsides

Citi's investment provides Pylon access to institutional-grade products and rates.
Pylon raised $8.5M in seed funding, boosting its growth potential.
Increased AI adoption in mortgage underwriting can enhance Pylon's platform efficiency.

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