Branch International

Branch Overview

Branch delivers world-class financial services to the mobile generation. With offices in San Francisco, Lagos, Mumbai, Nairobi, and Tanzania, Branch is a for-profit, socially conscious company that uses the power of data science to reduce the cost of delivering financial services in emerging markets. We believe that everyone, everywhere, deserves fair financial access. The rapid spread of smartphones presents an opportunity for the world’s emerging middle class to access banking options and achieve financial flexibility. 

The founder and former CEO of Kiva.org leads the Branch’s mission-driven team. The company presents a rich opportunity for our team members to drive meaningful growth in rapidly evolving and changing markets. Most recently, Branch announced our Series C and has garnered more than $100M in funding with investments from leading Silicon Valley firms.

We value diversity and are committed to providing an inclusive working environment where human beings of all backgrounds can thrive. 

Job Overview

Branch launched in India in early 2019 and has seen rapid adoption and growth. We are looking for talented Machine Learning Engineers to join us and be part of this journey. You will work closely with other Engineers, Product Managers, and Data Scientists to develop, improve, and deploy machine learning models and to solve other optimization problems. We make extensive use of machine learning in our credit product, where it is used (among other things) for underwriting and loan servicing decisions. We are also actively exploring other applications of Machine Learning in some of our newer products, with the ultimate goal of improving the user experience.

Machine Learning sits at the intersection of a number of different disciplines: Computer Science, Statistics, Operations Research, Data Science, and others. At Branch, we fundamentally believe that in order for Machine Learning to be impactful, it needs to be closely embedded into the rest of the product development and software engineering process, which is why we emphasize the importance of software engineering skills and experience for this role.

As a company, we are passionate about our customers, fearless in the face of barriers, and driven by data. As an engineering team, we value bottom-up innovation and decentralized decision-making. We believe the best ideas can come from anyone in the company, and we are working hard to create an environment where everyone feels empowered to propose solutions to the challenges we face. We are looking for individuals who thrive in a fast-moving, innovative, and customer-focused setting.

Here are some things you’ll do

• Credit Decisions: Core to our business is understanding and building signals from unstructured and structured data to identify good borrowers.
• Customer Service: Using machine learning and NLP, automate customer service interactions and provide context to our customer service team.
• Fraud Prevention: Identify patterns of fraudulent behavior and build models to detect and prevent these behaviors.
• Team work: Bring your experience to bear on the technical direction and abilities of the team, and work cross-functionally with policy and product teams as we improve processes and break new ground.

Minimum Requirements

We’re looking for a motivated and versatile engineer who understands the needs of a startup.

• 8+ years of hands-on experience building software in a production environment. Startup or early-stage team experience is preferred.
• Experience coordinating and collaborating with various business stakeholders and company leadership on critical functional decisions and technical roadmap.
• Excellent software engineering and programming skills, especially Python and SQL.
• A diverse range of data skills, including experimentation, statistics, and machine learning, and have used these skills to inform business decisions.
• A deep understanding of using cloud computing infrastructure and data pipelines in production.
• Self motivation: You teach yourself new skills. You take the initiative to solve problems before they arise. You roll up your sleeves and get stuff done.
• Team motivation: You listen to others, speak your mind, and ask the right questions. You are a great collaborator and teacher.
• The drive to make a positive impact on customers' lives.

Benefits of Joining

• Mission-driven, fast-paced and entrepreneurial environment
• Competitive salary and equity package
• A collaborative and flat company culture
• Remote first, with the option to work in-person occasionally
• Fully-paid Group Medical Insurance and Personal Accidental Insurance
• Unlimited paid time off including personal leave, bereavement leave, sick leave
• Fully paid parental leave - 6 months maternity leave and 3 months paternity leave
• Monthly WFH stipend alongside a one time home office set-up budget
• $500 Annual professional development budget 
• Discretionary trips to our offices across the globe, with global travel medical insurance 
• Team meals and social events- Virtual and In-person

Branch International is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The company does not and will not discriminate in employment on any basis prohibited by applicable law. We’re looking for more than just qualifications -- so if you’re unsure that you meet the criteria, please do not hesitate to apply!

Branch Overview

Imagine a world where every person has improved access to financial services. People could start new businesses, pay for their children’s education, cover their emergency medical bills – the possibilities to improve life are endless. 

Branch is a global technology company revolutionizing financial access for millions of underserved banking customers today across Africa and India. By leveraging the rapid adoption of smartphones, machine learning and other technology, Branch is pioneering new ways to improve access and value for those overlooked by banks. From instant loans to market-leading investment yields, Branch offers a variety of products that help our customers be financially empowered.

Branch’s mission-driven team is led by the co-founders of Kiva.org and one of the earliest product leaders of PayPal. Branch has raised over $100 million from leading Silicon Valley investors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Visa. 

With over 32 million downloads, Branch is one of the most popular finance apps in the world.

Job Overview

Branch launched in India in early 2019 and has seen rapid adoption and growth. In 2020 we started building out a full Engineering team in India to accelerate our success here. This team is working closely with our engineering team (based in the United States, Nigeria, and Kenya) to strengthen the capabilities of our existing product and build out new product lines for the company.

You will work closely with our Product and Data Science teams to design and maintain multiple technologies, including our API backend, credit scoring and underwriting systems, payments integrations, and operations tools. We face numerous interesting technical challenges ranging from maintaining complex financial systems to accessing and processing creative data sources for our algorithmic credit model. 

As a company, we are passionate about our customers, fearless in the face of barriers, and driven by data. As an engineering team, we value bottom-up innovation and decentralized decision-making: We believe the best ideas can come from anyone in the company, and we are working hard to create an environment where everyone feels empowered to propose solutions to the challenges we face. We are looking for individuals who thrive in a fast-moving, innovative, and customer-focused setting.

Responsibilities

• Make significant contributions to Branch’s data platform including data models, transformations, warehousing, and BI systems by bringing in best practices.
• Build customer facing and internal products and APIs with industry best practices around security and performance in mind.
• Influence and shape the company’s technical and product roadmap by providing timely and accurate inputs and owning various outcomes.
• Collaborate with peers in other functional areas (Machine Learning, DevOps, etc.) to identify potential growth areas and systems needed.
• Guide and mentor other younger engineers around you.
• Scale our systems to ever-growing levels of traffic and handle complexity.

Qualifications

• You have strong experience (8+ years) of designing, coding, and shipping data and backend software for web-based or mobile products.
• Experience coordinating and collaborating with various business stakeholders and company leadership on critical functional decisions and technical roadmap.
• You have strong knowledge of software development fundamentals, including relevant background in computer science fundamentals, distributed systems, data storage and processing, and agile development methodologies.
• Have experience designing maintainable and scalable data architecture for ETL and BI purposes.
• You are able to utlize your knowledge and expertise to code and ship quality products in a timely manner.
• You are pragmatic and combine a strong understanding of technology and product needs to arrive at the best solution for a given problem.
• You are highly entrepreneurial and thrive in taking ownership of your own impact. You take the initiative to solve problems before they arise.
• You are an excellent collaborator & communicator. You know that startups are a team sport. You listen to others, aren’t afraid to speak your mind and always try to ask the right questions. 
• You are excited by the prospect of working in a distributed team and company, working with teammates from all over the world.

Benefits of Joining

• Mission-driven, fast-paced and entrepreneurial environment
• Competitive salary and equity package
• A collaborative and flat company culture
• Remote first, with the option to work in-person occasionally
• Fully-paid Group Medical Insurance and Personal Accidental Insurance
• Unlimited paid time off including personal leave, bereavement leave, sick leave
• Fully paid parental leave - 6 months maternity leave and 3 months paternity leave
• Monthly WFH stipend alongside a one time home office set-up budget
• $500 Annual professional development budget 
• Discretionary trips to our offices across the globe, with global travel medical insurance 
• Team meals and social events- Virtual and In-person

Branch International is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The company does not and will not discriminate in employment on any basis prohibited by applicable law. We’re looking for more than just qualifications -- so if you’re unsure that you meet the criteria, please do not hesitate to apply!

• Customer Service - Delivering efficient and friendly responses to customer across different channels (main responsibility)
• Credit Risk - Evaluate loan applications for new borrowers applying for Branch loans, find and prevent fraud (main responsibility)
• Servicing & Collections - Proactively reaching out to borrowers who have missed payments
• Product - Escalating customer feedback and IT bugs to help improve our product
• Finance - Manage refunds, repayments, and other payment processes
• General - various administrative projects as needed

• 1-2 years of previous job experience in customer service
• Passionate about our mission and our customers
• Highly entrepreneurial, proactive, and willing to get your hands dirty
• Excellent communication skills, both oral and written
• Good grammar, spelling and punctuation
• Driven by data and highly analytical, good understanding of excel preferred
• Good typing speed (ideally above 45 wpm)
• Ideal candidates will be extremely flexible with scheduling e.g. willing to work on weekends and occasionally holidays

• You are required to take an online typing speed test through the link below
• Go to http://www.typingtest.com/">http://www.typingtest.com/ to complete a type speed test.
• On the left, select English, 1 minute, and Aesop's Fables.
• Click the green "Start Test" button.
• Please upload a screen shot of your typing test results as part of your cover letter.