Senior Applied AI Engineer

About Pagaya Shape the Future of Finance Pagaya is building a leading artificial intelligence network to help our partners grow their businesses and better serve their customers. Pagaya is a global technology company making life-changing financial products and services available to more people nationwide, as it reshapes the financial services ecosystem. By using machine learning, a vast data network and a sophisticated AI-driven approach, Pagaya provides comprehensive consumer credit and residential real estate solutions for its partners, their customers, and investors. Its proprietary API and capital solutions integrate into its network of partners to deliver seamless user experiences and greater access to the mainstream economy. Pagaya has offices in New York and Tel Aviv. For more information, visit pagaya.com . Let's create better outcomes together! About the Role As a Senior Applied AI Engineer embedded within the Office of the CEO and President (OCEO/OOP), you will serve as a high-impact builder driving the future of AI-enabled business transformation at Pagaya. Working at the intersection of business strategy, data architecture, and modern artificial intelligence, you will independently architect, build, and deploy practical, high-value AI solutions, automations, and intelligent agents that modernize internal workflows. Starting within the OCEO/OOP to address high-visibility executive priorities, your work will quickly expand to partner with key business functions across Capital Markets, Finance, and broader Operations. Combining a strong background in Business Intelligence (BI) with hands-on AI engineering capabilities, you will translate complex financial workflows into durable, scalable AI systems that elevate operational speed and analytical precision across the company, operating autonomously and with a high degree of technical ownership. Responsibilities

Embedded AI Architecture & Development: Act as the primary technical builder, architect, and problem-solver for AI-enabled workflow transformations - starting in the OCEO (with close guidance from our CTO) and expanding into Capital Markets, Finance, and key operational units. Independent Execution: Navigate Pagaya’s technical ecosystem independently to gather data, build consensus, and drive projects from ambiguous concepts to production-ready solutions without requiring significant technical handholding. Workflow Automation & Agentic Systems: Identify manual, repeated, or data-dense business processes and architect production-ready AI tools, customized copilots, and agentic workflows to streamline execution. BI & Data Integration: Leverage a robust background in Business Intelligence and data analysis to connect LLMs, foundation models, and AI agent frameworks directly into Pagaya’s data infrastructure, dashboards, and financial models. Cross-Functional Execution: Work closely with business leadership, financial analysts, and capital markets teams to translate ambiguous business problems and complex financial data into practical, user-friendly technical solutions. Rapid Prototyping & Scale: Design, iterate, and deploy prototypes rapidly based on stakeholder feedback, while adhering to enterprise standards for data security, governance, and responsible AI usage. Enablement & Documentation: Templatize and document solutions to enable scalable reuse across departments; lead walkthroughs and light enablement to drive active user adoption across technical and non-technical teams.

Requirements

Experience: 6+ years of experience in data engineering, business intelligence, or software engineering with demonstrated hands-on experience independently architecting and building applied AI solutions, internal tools, or AI-driven automations. Independent Architecture & Problem Solving: Proven ability to independently architect high-level ideas into technical solutions that provide business value and do so with minimal supervision . Organizational Navigation: Demonstrated ability to operate independently within a complex corporate environment, finding the right stakeholders, across all levels and geographies and systems to integrate with. Technical & Coding Proficiency: Advanced proficiency in software engineering with prior experience developing, delivering, and supporting AI components. Familiarity with cloud-native technologies (AWS, Docker, Kubernetes)

Utilize programming languages like Java, Scala, Python, Go, Node.js, JavaScript and TypeScript, Open Source RDBMS and NoSQL databases, Container Orchestration services including Docker and Kubernetes, and a variety of AWS tools and services

Modern AI Tooling & Frameworks: Hands-on experience with modern LLM APIs/ecosystems (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini), agentic orchestration frameworks, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures, and enterprise AI platforms. Communication & Stakeholder Management: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with a proven track record of distilling technical and financial concepts for non-technical leadership and cross-functional teams. Adaptability & Drive: An entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to manage multiple complex, fast-paced projects simultaneously, delivering meticulously accurate, self-audited work within tight deadlines. Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, Finance, Engineering, or an equivalent quantitative discipline required. Preferred: Prior exposure to financial services, structured finance, fixed income, or capital markets workflows is a strong plus. The pay ranges for New York-based hires are commensurate with candidate experience. Pay ranges for candidates working in locations other than New York may differ based on the cost of labor in that location. Compensation Range for New York Based Hires $165,000 — $205,000 USD Our Team Pagaya was founded in 2016 by seasoned research, finance, and technology entr