Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Money (Founding ML Lead)
DoorDash
About the Team
The Money org at DoorDash builds the financial products and platforms that power our marketplace — from helping merchants grow their businesses with access to capital, to enabling banking products for Dashers, to optimizing consumer payments and checkout experiences.
We are forming a new Money Machine Learning team, and this role will be the founding ML engineer. The team’s initial focus will be on underwriting and decisioning for merchant cash advances and lending products, with a broader mandate over time to support other high-impact Money initiatives, including:
- Merchant, Dasher and Consumer financial products (banking, payouts, gift cards, risk)
- Consumer payments optimization (authorization rates, routing, cost efficiency)
- Platform-level ML capabilities for credit and financial decisioning
This team will sit at the intersection of fintech bets and the Money platform, building reusable ML systems that scale across products. Over time, this role has the opportunity to grow and shape a team, setting technical direction and best practices for financial ML at DoorDash.
About the Role
We’re looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead the design, development, and deployment of production-grade ML systems that drive financial decisioning across DoorDash’s Money ecosystem.
You will start by owning ML-driven underwriting models for merchant cash advances, partnering closely with Product, Risk, Data Science, and Engineering to improve approval rates, loss performance, and capital efficiency. As the Money ML surface area expands, you will broaden your scope to support additional initiatives such as banking products, payouts, and consumer payments optimization.
This is a highly impactful individual contributor role for someone who enjoys building 0→1 ML systems, operating at Staff-level scope, and influencing technical direction across multiple teams. You will play a key role in setting best practices for model development, deployment, monitoring, and governance across the Money org.
You’re excited about this opportunity because you will…
- Own and build foundational ML systems that directly impact capital allocation, risk, and growth across DoorDash.
- Work on real-world financial decisioning problems, including credit and underwriting, with clear business and customer impact.
- Lead 0→1 ML initiatives, defining how machine learning is applied across Money products.
- Operate at Staff-level scope, influencing architecture, strategy, and execution beyond a single team.
- Collaborate closely with Product, Data Science, and Platform Engineering in a highly cross-functional environment.
- Help shape the future of Money ML at DoorDash, with the opportunity to mentor others and grow a team over time.
We’re excited about you because…
- You have 8+ years of industry experience building and deploying production-scale ML systems.
- You have direct experience with credit, lending, or cash advance underwriting, including risk modeling and decisioning.
- You have a strong foundation in statistics, probability, and machine learning, and know how to apply them to noisy, real-world financial data.
- You are fluent in Python (and/or Java, Scala, or C++) and experienced with ML frameworks such as XGBoost, PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar.
- You have designed and operated ML systems in production, including monitoring, retraining, and model governance.
- You can lead complex technical projects end-to-end, influencing stakeholders across multiple orgs.
- You communicate clearly and effectively with technical and non-technical audiences.
- You are excited about building something new and operating with ambiguity at high ownership.
- Experience in fintech, payments, banking, or marketplace risk systems is a strong plus.
Notice to Applicants for Jobs Located in NYC or Remote Jobs Associated With Office in NYC Only
We use Covey as part of our hiring and/or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT in NYC. As part of the hiring and/or promotion process, we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound from August 21, 2023, through December 21, 2023, and resumed using Covey Scout for Inbound again on June 29, 2024.
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Compensation
The successful candidate's starting pay will fall within the pay range listed below and is determined based on job-related factors including, but not limited to, skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. Base salary is localized according to an employee’s work location. Ranges are market-dependent and may be modified in the future.
In addition to base salary, the compensation for this role includes opportunities for equity grants. Talk to your recruiter for more information.
DoorDash cares about you and your overall well-being. That’s why we offer a comprehensive benefits package to all regular employees, which includes a 401(k) plan with employer matching, 16 weeks of paid parental leave, wellness benefits, commuter benefits match, paid time off and paid sick leave in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act). DoorDash also offers medical, dental, and vision benefits, 11 paid holidays, disability and basic life insurance, family-forming assistance, and a mental health program, among others.
To learn more about our benefits, visit our careers page here.
See below for paid time off details:
- For salaried roles: flexible paid time off/vacation, plus 80 hours of paid sick time per year.
- For hourly roles: vacation accrued at about 1 hour for every 25.97 hours worked (e.g. about 6.7 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 3.4 hours/month if working 20 hours/week), and paid sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 30 hours worked (e.g. about 5.8 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 2.9 hours/month if working 20 hours/week).
The national base pay ranges for this position within the United States, including Illinois and Colorado.
About DoorDash
At DoorDash, our mission to empower local economies shapes how our team members move quickly, learn, and reiterate in order to make impactful decisions that display empathy for our range of users—from Dashers to merchant partners to consumers. We are a technology and logistics company that started by enabling door-to-door delivery, and we are looking for team members who can help us go from a company that is known as the place you order food to a company that people turn to for any and all goods.
DoorDash is growing rapidly and changing constantly, which gives our team members the opportunity to share their unique perspectives, solve new challenges, and own their careers. We're committed to supporting employees’ happiness, healthiness, and overall well-being by providing comprehensive benefits and perks including premium healthcare, wellness expense reimbursement, paid parental leave and more.
Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
We’re committed to growing and empowering a more inclusive community within our company, industry, and cities. That’s why we hire and cultivate diverse teams of people from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe that true innovation happens when everyone has room at the table and the tools, resources, and opportunity to excel.
Statement of Non-Discrimination: In keeping with our beliefs and goals, no employee or applicant will face discrimination or harassment based on: race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, gender, marital/domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability status, or veteran status. Above and beyond discrimination and harassment based on “protected categories,” we also strive to prevent other subtler forms of inappropriate behavior (i.e., stereotyping) from ever gaining a foothold in our office. Whether blatant or hidden, barriers to success have no place at DoorDash. We value a diverse workforce – people who identify as women, non-binary or gender non-conforming, LGBTQIA+, American Indian or Native Alaskan, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, differently-abled, caretakers and parents, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. Thank you to the Level Playing Field Institute for this statement of non-discrimination.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and any other state or local hiring regulations, we will consider for employment any qualified applicant, including those with arrest and conviction records, in a manner consistent with the applicable regulation.
If you need any accommodations, please inform your recruiting contact upon initial connection.
