Smile Identity seeks a highly skilled and experienced Director of Artificial Intelligence to join our team. We are on track to perform over 100,000,000 biometric KYC verifications in 2024. This role is ideal for a strong individual contributor (IC) and technical leader who will report directly to the CTO. The successful candidate will have a robust software engineering background with expertise in machine learning infrastructure, computer vision, and working with large datasets. This position will focus on leading our Computer Vision Machine Learning team, developing scalable ML solutions, and driving our ML initiatives to success.

Primary Responsibilities

Lead the CVML team, providing technical direction and mentorship to engineers and data scientists.
Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to understand their needs and provide tailored ML solutions.
Oversee the deployment and management of ML models on inference servers, ensuring efficiency and scalability.
Foster a culture of critical thinking and innovation to continuously improve ML platform efficiency and effectiveness.
Develop and implement best practices for DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, and automation in ML workflows.
Develop, maintain, and optimize internal tools to support the CVML team's operations.
Design and build scalable full-stack applications to support ML operations, including front-end interfaces and back-end services.
Design and implement advanced data labeling tools and techniques to improve data quality and annotation efficiency.
Implement comprehensive monitoring and logging solutions for ML models and infrastructure.
Lead the development and deployment of multi-modal models, integrating LLMs (Large Language Models) with computer vision systems.
Design and oversee rigorous evaluation processes for ML models to ensure performance and reliability.

Current Projects and Challenges

Document Anti-spoof Models including identifying security features, photocopy, and tampering detection
Face Detection in Documents - develop models to accurately identify faces within various document types that we can embed into mobile SDKs.
Unbiased Face Verification - Create fair and accurate face verification models across diverse demographics.
Fraud detection models - We combat sophisticated attacks daily which require constant innovation and resilience to stay ahead.

What We're Looking For

A minimum of 8 years of professional experience in software engineering, with significant experience in ML infrastructure, computer vision, and full-stack development.
Proven track record of technical leadership and mentorship in a dynamic environment.
Strong proficiency in Python and JavaScript.
Expertise in containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS (S3, EC2, RDS), Google Cloud, or Azure.
Solid understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases, specifically PostgreSQL and MongoDB.
Proficiency in front-end frameworks like React, with experience in TypeScript.
Deep knowledge of ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Scikit-learn.
Extensive experience with DevOps tools and practices, including CI/CD pipelines.
Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to debug complex systems.
Strong communication skills and the ability to work collaboratively in a distributed team environment.
Experience in a startup environment and familiarity with agile methodologies is highly valued.
Experience with multi-modal models and integrating LLMs with computer vision systems.
Proven expertise in designing and implementing evaluation metrics and processes for ML models.

Desirable Skills

Experience with data labeling tools and advanced techniques.
Knowledge of model deployment frameworks and inference servers.
Proficiency in data visualization tools like Matplotlib, Plotly, or similar.
Understanding of machine learning and computer vision principles.
Knowledge of data governance best practices.

Compensation

A competitive compensation package with stock options.
Comprehensive healthcare benefits.
Ability to work anywhere.
An opportunity to be part of a purpose-driven technology company at a pivotal growth stage.