Lead ML Engineer

Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

Visa operates the world's largest retail electronic payments network and is one of the most recognized global financial services brands. Visa facilitates global commerce through the transfer of value and information among financial institutions, merchants, consumers, businesses, and government entities. 
 We offer a range of branded payment product platforms, which our financial institution clients use to develop and offer credit, charge, deferred debit, prepaid and cash access programs to cardholders. Visa's card platforms provide consumers, businesses, merchants, and government entities with a secure, convenient, and reliable way to pay and be paid in 170 countries and territories. 
 As the leader of the Data & AI organization at Bengaluru, you will work in a rapid-paced environment leading various Data and System Engineering teams developing next generation solutions for Visa. You will have accountability for strategy, planning, hiring, vendor management, and overall execution & delivery of multiple products for Visa’s AI Governance (AIG). You will face big challenges and question the status quo. You will change the way data products are developed at Visa with this initiative. You will build upon an established Data Science research and development practice for Data Products, focused on AI Governance and Compliance. 

Successful candidates will be highly adaptable, possess strong interpersonal and organizational skills, and able to effectively manage multiple work streams. You should have had experience collecting or analyzing engineering data and using this data to drive business decisions. 

In this role, you will spearhead product development and engineering efficiency in product teams by delivering data services, tools, and systems that will accelerate creating products featuring the best customer experience with the highest reliability, security, and outcome for Visa. You will also evangelize the Data Science, ML, AI, Generative AI, Engineering Fundamentals for development teams at Visa. This includes engaging in technical and functional discussions with all the engineering teams. 

We will take a data-driven approach and are passionate about having a culture of learning fast and constantly iterating towards success. You will wear multiple hats and demonstrate breadth, depth, and leadership. The solutions you help create will have a multiplier effect across all of Visa. 

 Responsibilities: 

• You will leverage sound architectural principles to implement effective and efficient solutions. 

• You will be a lead working with other developers on building applications from scratch to pushing them into production. 

• You will play a pivotal role in developing an advanced AI governance platform. This platform will be integral to the management and auditing of Visa's AI/ML systems. Your responsibility will also include addressing evolving challenges in AI governance and responsible AI. 

• You will explore and evaluate emerging technologies, prototype, and strategize its adaptation within Visa. You will lead code reviews, and deliver high quality codeSupport production systems and constantly improve our user experience. 

• Follow established software development guidelines and Visa security standards 

• Build and maintain relationships with the agile team, the user community, architects, and support teams to understand requirements and implement effective solutions 

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:
12+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 4 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 13+ years of relevant work experience.
12+ years’ work experience in the software technology industry.
At least 8 years’ team leadership experience as a team lead or architect.
Experience in software development, big data, and machine-learning processes.
Experience leading a development team in the design, development, coding, testing, and debugging of applications.
Proficiency in machine learning algorithms and techniques, as well as programming languages such as Python, R, Golang or Java.
Experience with machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch is also essential.
Experience working in an agile environment.
Experience in software build and release pipeline using CI/CD tools, containerization, Unix, and shell scripting.
Mentoring and coaching experience.
Skilled in creating and delivering presentations to large audiences.
Developed a full-stack application and supported the user community.
Strong understanding of agentic frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, etc.  
Experience with OpenAI or Anthropic or Llama models and developing applications that leverage its capabilities. 
Proficiency in implementing ethical AI practices, including fairness, transparency, and bias mitigation. This involves leading discussions on moral and behavioral AI topics and advocating for best practices in AI implementation. 
Ability to oversee AI governance processes, including the development and maintenance of AI compliance frameworks, and ensuring that AI models are reliable, fair, and transparent. 
Strong understanding of ethical considerations in AI, including the mitigation of bias and ensuring fairness in AI models. 
Familiarity with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques. 
Hands on experience with Pre-Training, Fine-Tuning, Reinforcement Learning. 
Prior experience in Google Cloud Vertex AI, AWS SageMaker or Azure Machine Learning Studio is a plus. 

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.