Principal AI/ML Architect

Varo is an entirely new kind of bank. All digital, mission-driven, FDIC insured and designed for the way our customers live their lives. A bank for all of us.

About Varo We believe everyone deserves financial empowerment. At Varo, our Product team is at the heart of this mission, collaborating across departments and using both customer insights and hard data to build products that solve everyday problems. We're just getting started on our growth trajectory - Be a part of transforming banking with us.

About the role

We are seeking a Product Manager to join our Savings and Deposits team to define, lead and deliver key aspects of our payments roadmap Your objective will be to rapidly expand our payments capabilities to meet core customer needs.

We’re looking for an individual with the skill to converge customer and business needs through deep understanding of payment rail capabilities and user experience. Our goal is to go beyond the utility needs of payments to delight our customers with money movement that is fast, frictionless, intelligent, and transparent. This role will be responsible for initiatives end to end, from performing customer and market research, to designing the product, to developing and implementing the products, and measuring the results and identifying opportunities to iterate.

What you'll be doing Architecting GenAI Ecosystems: Design and implement production-grade GenAI agents using AWS Bedrock, AgentCore, and Strands Agents. Build robust RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines utilizing OpenSearch and S3 Vector stores. Scale Modern MLOps & Feature Stores: Lead the development and integration of a world-class MLOp s platform. Build and maintain Varo's Feature Store Platform architecture and ensure low-latency data availability for both real-time lending decisions and batch model training. Data Fabric & Integration: Oversee the integration of core AWS analytics services (Glue, Glue Data Catalog, Athena) to ensure AI models have high-quality, governed data "fuel." High-Velocity Execution: Navigate the complexities of a fast-changing environment, collaborating across Data Science, Credit, and Product teams to move from PoC to production in weeks, not months. Executive Influencing: Act as a key contributor to the Architecture Guild, using strong presentation skills to translate complex EKS/EC2 infrastructure and AI scaling strategies for executive stakeholders. Drive Strategy: Serve as a subject matter expert within the Architecture Guild, presenting technical proposals and influencing senior leadership on emerging AI trends. Collaborate Horizontally: Partner across domains including Data Science, Credit Policy, and Data Engineering to ensure technical alignment with business goals.

You'll bring the following required skills and experiences Deep Experience: Ideally 10+ years in technical architecture with at least 5–7 years specifically focused on Machine Learning. Architectural Foundation: Strong mastery of foundational architecture, with proven experience building agents, context stores, and vector stores. AWS Mastery: Deep, hands-on experience with AWS SageMaker AI, Bedrock, S3, and OpenSearch. Familiarity with AgentCore and Strands Agents for autonomous task execution. Infrastructure & Compute: Proficiency in managing server infrastructure for AI workloads, specifically Amazon EKS (Kubernetes) and EC2 optimization for model hosting. Data Engineering Foundation: Expert knowledge of the AWS data stack: AWS Glue for ETL, Glue Data Catalog for metadata management, and Athena for serverless querying. Certifications: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional or AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty is highly preferred The "Bridge" Mindset: A unique ability to balance high-level strategic thought leadership with a passion for hands-on, tactical execution.