Senior Platform Engineer, Avant
Data & Analytics
$135-165k
M, T, Th in-office
3+ days a week in office
Personal credit FinTech
Open for applications
Personal credit FinTech
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
$135-165k
M, T, Th in-office
3+ days a week in office
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To empower every customer with innovative solutions designed to help them reach their goals.
Role
Who you are
- Experience: 5+ years of experience in backend or platform engineering
- Technical Foundation: Strong backend development skills, experience building and deploying services in a cloud environment like AWS, and a solid understanding of infrastructure concepts. While our stack is Python-heavy, we value engineering principles over specific tool expertise
- Problem-Solving Mindset: You can operate at multiple levels of abstraction, from high-level system design to hands-on coding. You approach unfamiliar tools and patterns with excitement and a desire to learn
- Pragmatism and Agility: You are a practical thinker who can critically evaluate tools and ideas. You're comfortable building rapid prototypes and iterating on proofs-of-concept to find the best path forward
- Clear Communicator: You can articulate complex technical ideas and proposals, fostering open and productive design discussions
- Experience with our core stack: Databricks, Spark, Kafka, Airflow, Temporal, or dbt
- We invite you to apply to our positions even if you do not meet 100% of the qualifications listed in the description
Desirable
- Hands-on experience with Terraform and AWS services relevant to data platforms (e.g., S3, EKS, MSK, DMS, Glue)
- Familiarity with data engineering concepts or the machine learning lifecycle (MLOps)
- Personal projects or a demonstrated interest in exploring GenAI or other emerging technologies
What the job involves
- As a Senior Platform Engineer, you will be at the heart of Avant’s technical evolution. This isn’t a maintenance role; you will be a key player in designing and building the foundational data and machine learning platforms that power our products and analytics
- You will tackle the dual challenge of scaling our core systems for the future while pioneering the practical application of Generative AI to create real business differentiation
- You will join a focused, agile team with significant autonomy and a mandate to innovate. If you are a curious, hands-on engineer who thrives on variety and wants to shape how a successful fintech scales its most critical capabilities, this is the opportunity for you
- Design and implement our next-generation orchestration layer, transforming it from a series of environment-specific instances into a unified, multi-tenant platform
- Develop full-stack internal applications (Python backends, React frontends) that empower teams with self-service UIs for ingestion, transformation, and delivery
- Enhance our MLOps platform to empower teams with self-service tools for the entire model lifecycle
- Evolve and expand our core data and analytics stack, working with technologies like Kafka, Databricks, Spark, dbt, and Kubernetes to make advanced capabilities accessible to everyone
- Collaborate closely with Data Engineering and Product teams to understand their needs, design robust solutions, and build the tools that accelerate their work
- Move beyond the hype and contribute to the practical adoption of GenAI, focusing on applications that deliver real business value
- Help define patterns and practices for building reliable, observable, and cost-effective GenAI systems in production
- Build safe and effective sandboxes for developers to experiment with new tools and features
Our take
Many Americans with below average credit scores are caught in a bind: they're unable to improve their score, and simultaneously cannot access traditional loans. Avant's alternative is to offer credit options that are powered by machine learning and based upon a large database that helps to manage risk.
For its users, the company offers a quick credit decision and speedy access to any allotted funds. It has issued over $8 billion in loans to date, and has also expanded its business through the acquisitions of ReadyForZero in 2015 and Zero Financial in 2021.
This expansion has enabled Avant to reach towards its goal of offering a whole suite of products in a single platform, such as loans, credit cards, and deposits. Although there are many FinTechs looking at ways to remove the barriers that people with low credit scores face when trying to take out loans, this expansion to banking products should help Avant to stand out.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Dec 2022
$125m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Sep 2015
$325m
SERIES E
Total funding: $779m
Company benefits
- Choice of great medical, dental, and vision insurance plan options
- 401(k) Match
- Unlimited paid time off
- Flexible work environment
- Generous paid parental leave
- Lunch allowance (Fooda) and in-office snacks
- WFH stipends for our remote employees
- Access to LinkedIn Learning for professional development
- No meeting wednesdays - (a.k.a. planned time to Get Sh!t Done)
- Summer fridays
- Fun in-office and virtual social events
- (And who doesn’t love the swag)
Company HQ
River North, Chicago, IL
Leadership
Al Goldstein
(Co-Founder & Executive Chair)They worked for a year at Deutsche Bank before founding Pangea Properties in 2008, and Avant in 2013. They have been Chair since, alongside founding Amount, Spring Labs, and StoicLane.
Paul Zhang
(Co-Founder & CIO)Having studied at the University of Illinois, they spent a year as a Software Engineer at CashNetUSA and Enova Financial. They founded Debteye in 2011, before starting Avant in 2013, serving first as CTO then Chief Architect, CTO again and finally CIO.
Matthew Bochenek
(CEO)Has been with the business since 2013, working in a range of positions including Head of US Servicing, Head of Operations and COO - before becoming CEO in 2021. Previously spend a decade at Superfund Asset Management.
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