---
title: 'Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Kard Financial, Inc.'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-kard-financial-inc-remote-nxr7e5eadr6a'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Kard Financial, Inc.

- **Company:** Kard Financial, Inc.
- **Location:** Remote
- **Compensation:** $160k–$190k
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/kardfinancialinc/jobs/4730993005

## Job description

Kard is building commerce media infrastructure that connects financial institutions, financial-services platforms, and merchants through data and merchant-funded rewards. As our reach expands, we are building for a step-change in scale, and for opportunities ranging from more relevant rewards and marketer intelligence to new commerce and distribution models.

## About the Role

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will design, build, and operate the production systems that turn machine learning into durable product capabilities. Your scope will span personalization and recommendations, optimization and decisioning, experimentation and measurement infrastructure, model training and serving, and the shared platforms and tooling that support ML development at Kard.

This is a senior individual-contributor role on the Data team, reporting to the Director of Data & Platform. You will work primarily with other machine learning engineers and data scientists, while partnering across Data and Product to move models from experimentation through deployment and ongoing operation. You will also provide technical leadership through architecture, engineering standards, mentorship, and design and code review.

## Responsibilities

- Design, build, and operate end-to-end machine learning systems across batch and real-time workloads, including feature generation, training, evaluation, deployment, inference, and retraining.
- Develop production capabilities for personalization, recommendations, ranking, optimization, contextual decisioning, experimentation, and measurement.
- Build reusable ML platforms, pipelines, frameworks, and tooling that improve reproducibility, self-service, reliability, and development speed.
- Own the operational lifecycle of production models, including observability, data and model quality, drift detection, performance monitoring, failure handling, retraining, and governance.
- Partner with other ML practitioners to turn prototypes and research into maintainable systems, and with Data and Product teams to integrate those systems into Kard’s products and platform.
- Provide technical leadership for ML architecture and distributed systems, making pragmatic tradeoffs among model performance, reliability, scalability, development speed, and operational complexity.

Desired Skills

- 8+ years of professional software engineering or machine learning engineering experience.
- A strong record of building, deploying, and operating machine learning systems in production.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, APIs, testing, deployment, observability, and maintainable production code.
- Experience designing distributed systems, large-scale data-processing workflows, or high-throughput and low-latency services.
- Fluency across the ML lifecycle, including data and feature pipelines, training, evaluation, model serving, monitoring, and retraining.
- The ability to investigate production issues across models, data, application code, and infrastructure.
- The judgment and autonomy to lead technically complex work, navigate ambiguity, and make architectural decisions with long-term consequences.
- Strong collaboration and communication skills, particularly when working across machine learning, data engineering, analytics, and product disciplines.
- A commitment to raising the technical capabilities of the broader team through mentorship, thoughtful review, documentation, and shared engineering practices.
- Demonstrated experience matters more to us than a particular degree or industry background.
- U.S. core business hours availability and willingness to travel for company meetings.

Bonus Points

- Experience with personalization, recommendation, ranking, optimization, experimentation, measurement, or real-time decisioning systems.
- Experience with technologies such as Python, Apache Spark, Databricks, MLflow, feature stores, or model-serving platforms.
- Experience operating ML workloads on AWS, Kubernetes or Amazon EKS, and infrastructure managed through Terraform.
- Experience building ML systems at enterprise, transaction-intensive, or regulated scale.

Remote - USA Pay Range $160,000—$190,000 USD

Why Join:

Kard recognizes the unique value each of us brings to our collective success. As part of our remote-first team, you'll have the autonomy to influence our trajectory, actively contributing to the growth of our business and the evolution of our company culture. By embodying our core values of Initiative, Openness, and Humility, you will not only witness but directly foster an inclusive and dynamic work environment, from the executive level down.

Our competitive benefit plan includes:

- Flexible PTO, with a minimum requirement to take one day off a quarter, ten days a year, promoting mental well-being
- Observance of 11 Federal Holidays, plus an additional day each for Black Friday and Christmas Eve (US employees only)
- Health, Dental and Vision Insurance
- 401k with employer match (US employees only)
- Coworking space and WFH setup reimbursement
- Company Offsites for planning, team-building, and networking

Kard is an equal opportunity employer and we actively encourage applicants of all genders, backgrounds, and experiences to apply. We believe that diverse perspectives enrich our workplace and drive our success.

## About Kard Financial, Inc.

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Kard is a rewards-as-a-service API platform and the first independent commerce media network that uses predictive AI and first-party transaction data to power hyperpersonalized offers and performance marketing.
- **Entity Type**: Private (funded startup; raised $30 million total, including $23 million Series A)
- **Headquarters**: Remote‑first, United States (team across all U.S. time zones)
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Ben Mackinnon

## Core Business
- **Primary Industries**: Commerce media / loyalty / rewards‑as‑a‑service; adtech; fintech.
- **Target Customers**: B2B – fintech companies, banks, card issuers (FIs), and merchants (both online and brick‑and‑mortar).
- **Mission**: Build the first open loyalty system – a rewards‑as‑a‑service platform that enables modern issuers to connect consumers with brands they love.

## Products & Services
- **Commerce Media Network (for merchants)**: A pay‑for‑performance ad solution where merchants only pay for verified purchases, not impressions. Uses transaction data from 47M+ cardholders to target new, existing, or lapsed customers with personalized offers (location‑based, tiered, spending challenges). Includes A/B testing, AI‑driven insights, and real‑time adjustments.
- **Rewards‑as‑a‑Service API Platform (for fintechs & FIs)**: An API‑first platform that allows issuers to design their own loyalty UX while Kard handles the backend – offer management, transaction tracking, push notifications, and email campaigns. PCI‑Compliant and SOC 2 certified.
- **Realtime Ad Network**: Leverages transaction data from tens of millions of consumers to give advertisers insights into shopping behavior across the entire wallet.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: **Total Funding** – $30 million (including a $23 million Series A round).  
  *Annual revenue is not publicly available.*
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Not named explicitly in provided materials, but listed as “backed by $30M from industry‑leading investors and seasoned experts.” Also named “Techstars mentor” and “active angel investor in fintech and adtech startups” in founder bio – suggests affiliation with Techstars.
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Named to the **2024 Fintech Innovation 50**.
  - Earned a spot on the **Inc. 5000 list of America’s Fastest‑Growing Private Companies**.
  - Employees: ~50 team members (as of latest careers FAQ) and “growing rapidly.”
  - Claims 47M+ cardholders in its network, 25K+ US locations, and metrics such as 15% re‑engagement of previously inactive cardholders and 40% more repeat purchases.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First independent commerce media network** – operates as a neutral, open platform not owned by a single bank or card network.
- **Pay‑only‑for‑verified‑purchases** model (performance‑based, not impression‑based).
- **Real first‑party transaction data** from millions of Gen Z and Millennial shoppers, enable hyperpersonalization and closed‑loop measurement.
- **API‑first, flexible design** – issuers can keep their own UX while Kard handles the heavy lifting.
- **PCI‑Compliant and SOC 2 certified** – security credentials that satisfy the largest banks and fintechs.

## Strategic Focus
- Expand the open loyalty system by onboarding more issuers, fintechs, and merchants.
- Deepen AI‑powered predictive targeting and real‑time offer optimization.
- Grow the network effect: more cardholders → better transaction data → more effective offers → more merchants and issuers joining.
- Continue scaling the “real‑time ad network” to provide cross‑merchant insights.

## Why Work Here
- **Fully remote** – “100% remote” with employees in every U.S. time zone. Work‑from‑home reimbursements and wellness stipend provided.
- **Great benefits**: Open PTO, health/vision/dental insurance, employer 401k contributions, paid parental leave, development budget.
- **Culture**: Emphasizes humility, initiative, openness, and inclusivity. Annual team offsites (2+ per year) to strengthen bonds.
- **Transparent compensation** – salary ranges included in every job description; pay targets “meet or exceed 75% of the current market rate.”
- **Structured, respectful hiring process** – interview process designed to be completed in 3–4 weeks, with take‑home assignments for R&D roles. Strong commitment to diversity and reducing bias.
- **Current open roles (R&D & Sales)**: Measurement Lead, Senior Analytics Engineer, Senior Data Scientist, Merchant Account Executive – all remote.

## Sources
1. [getkard.com](https://www.getkard.com/) – Company overview, product features, security, network stats.
2. [getkard.com/careers](https://www.getkard.com/careers) – Benefits, values, remote policy, inclusivity.
3. [getkard.com/about](https://www.getkard.com/about) – History, founder, mission, Series A funding, awards (Fintech Innovation 50, Inc. 5000).
4. [getkard.com/guide-to-interviewing-at-kard](https://www.getkard.com/guide-to-interviewing-at-kard) – Interview process, team size (~50), remote FAQ, compensation philosophy.
5. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/kardfinancialinc](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/kardfinancialinc) – Open positions, total funding ($30M), investors.

## Other roles at Kard Financial, Inc.

- [Software Engineering Manager, Data](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineering-manager-data-kard-financial-inc-remote-k65thw4cq40f)
- [Staff Product Manager, Data & Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-product-manager-data-platform-kard-financial-inc-remote-2dafcc8tdg47)
- [Data Support Analyst (India)](https://feeny.ai/job/data-support-analyst-india-kard-financial-inc-remote-58snzk1q0bxj)
- [Merchant Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/merchant-account-executive-kard-financial-inc-remote-q8hh5fxftkxq)
- [Senior Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-scientist-kard-financial-inc-remote-f5h7gg3mfdn9)
- [Measurement Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/measurement-lead-kard-financial-inc-remote-5t8zbw76atv3)
- [Senior Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-checkr-san-francisco-california-s61j722jabj1) — San Francisco California, United States
- [Senior Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-caronsale-brazil-cnrnkp0rxh43) — Brazil
- [Senior Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-wpp-copenhagen-pa1gy9jxxx43) — Copenhagen, Denmark
- [Senior Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-machine-learning-engineer-xero-ontario-1gbmfz62vsqp) — Ontario, Canada