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About Turaco

It is urgent to find a way to insure the uninsured. Turaco’s mission is to relieve people from the fear of financial shocks. Our vision is to insure one billion people, effectively doubling the global number of insured individuals.

Turaco is a rapidly growing financial services start-up in Africa, introducing a new insurance model aimed at emerging customers. We provide subscription-based insurance for the mass market, bundled with everyday transactions that people already engage in. We partner with companies serving emerging consumers to deliver affordable insurance products that genuinely enhance people’s lives. At Turaco, we prioritize simplicity, communication, and transparency while striving to transform how insurance operates. We are in the claims-paying business.

Turaco values diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We’re building a team where our differences enhance and strengthen us. We strictly prohibit discrimination and harassment based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic.

Since our launch in February 2019, Turaco has attracted a cumulative total of 5 million end users. We are experiencing rapid growth and are looking for team members who can evolve alongside us. To learn more, visit www.turaco.insure.

Technology at Turaco

Turaco's in-house tech platform powers all insurance operations, including claims processing, insurance pricing, customer onboarding, and communications. This core platform and several complementary tech products are maintained by our tech team, which comprises 4 software engineers, 3 data scientists/engineers, 2 QA analysts, and 2 product managers.

Our core tech stack uses Java with Spring Boot for the back-end, React for the front-end, and Postgres as the primary database engine. We run our services on AWS in a microservices architecture using Kubernetes.

Your mission:

The Senior Applied AI Engineer will play a critical role in shaping Turaco's AI-driven future, building intelligent systems that improve internal operations and deliver better outcomes for our customers and partners. This role sits within our "Service Center" team, supporting the operations and growth of multiple country offices.

You will partner with teams across technology, insurance operations, call center, partnerships, and business development to identify high-impact AI opportunities, ship production-grade solutions, and champion a culture of responsible, pragmatic AI use across the organization.

Key Roles & Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and deploy AI/ML solutions that address real operational and customer-facing problems — from NLP and predictive models to LLM-powered workflows and intelligent automation.
• Translate business requirements into well-scoped AI projects with clear success metrics, timelines, and tradeoffs.
• Own the full ML lifecycle: data exploration, model development, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Build and maintain robust data pipelines and infrastructure to support model training and inference at scale.
• Lead and mentor a team of engineers, fostering growth through code reviews, pair programming, and knowledge-sharing.
• Collaborate with operations and product teams to embed AI capabilities directly into workflows and products.
• Evaluate and integrate third-party AI tools, APIs, and foundation models (e.g. LLMs) where they offer clear value.
• Create clear technical documentation for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proactively monitor deployed models for drift, degradation, and bias, and implement corrective measures.

Key Qualifications & Your Profile

• ​​Lives Turaco's values - pushing boundaries, working with excellence, and a profound respect for the individual.
• 7+ years of professional software experience, with at least 3 years in applied AI/ML roles in production environments.
• Startup or entrepreneurial experience is highly desirable - you are comfortable with ambiguity and moving fast.
• Demonstrated strong programming skills in at least two of these languages: Java, Python, Go, or JavaScript; experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or scikit-learn.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs and generative AI - prompt engineering, fine-tuning, Reinforcement Learning (RL), RAG architectures, or building LLM-powered applications.
• Solid understanding of classical ML: supervised/unsupervised learning, model evaluation, and feature engineering.
• Experience with data infrastructure - SQL/NoSQL databases, data pipelines, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Familiarity with MLOps practices: experiment tracking, model versioning, CI/CD for ML, and monitoring in production.
• Strong communication skills, able to translate complex AI concepts clearly for non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field; strong academic track record preferred.
• A creative, first-principles thinker who can identify where AI creates genuine value - and where it doesn't.
• Excellent team player with strong organizational and leadership skills.

Our Company Culture

At Turaco, our culture is defined by our values: 1) Pushing boundaries, 2) Working with excellence, and 3) Profound respect for the individual. If these values resonate with you, we encourage you to apply!

Total Compensation & Benefits

Turaco offers a competitive salary commensurate with experience. Additionally, we provide a comprehensive benefits package, including stock options and healthcare, all within a supportive company culture that fosters growth and strong professional relationships.