Lead Forecasting & Financial Analyst

About the role

Guild is hiring a Lead Forecast Modeling Analyst to scale the impact of our Forecasting and Financial Analytics team. You'll own and improve critical components of our most complex and most important forecasting model — working inside a modern, modular forecasting system and experimentation framework to drive step-change improvements in how well we forecast clients' education benefit program.

Responsibilities

• Develop and improve the usage-based forecasting models for critical components of clients' education benefit with Guild, using advanced statistical and machine learning techniques.
• Raise forecast accuracy and shorten the monthly refresh cycle, using a backtesting and experimentation framework to test methodological changes with rigor.
• Build tooling and process to catch correctable model issues.
• Transfer modeling logic out of individual heads into well-structured, documented, tested code, building redundancy on a business-critical forecast.
• Partner cross-functionally with Analytics, Data Science, Data Engineering, Product, and Technology teams to improve the data, systems, and infrastructure the forecast depends on.
• Mentor and guide junior team members, fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
• Produce insights, analyses, and recommendations to help internal stakeholders understand forecast drivers and the impact on client and internal business metrics.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of total experience in analytics, data science, forecasting, or financial planning & analysis.
• Strong experience with SQL and experience transforming and structuring large datasets into reusable formats.
• Proficiency in Python and/or R, with depth across time-series and machine learning forecasting methods and sound judgment about the tradeoffs among accuracy, interpretability, and stability.
• Experience operationalizing models — backtesting, validation, monitoring, drift detection, retraining — ideally on a platform such as Databricks with experiment tracking (e.g., MLflow).
• A track record of getting productive quickly in an existing codebase and improving it collaboratively.
• Experience with Looker, Tableau, Omni, or similar data visualization tool.
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, or similar coding agents.
• The ability to translate forecasts, including their uncertainty, into clear recommendations for non-technical stakeholders.

Pay

Base salary range of $140,000 - $190,000 plus stock options. Compensation offered will be based on a combination of factors such as experience, competencies, and internal equity.

Benefits

• Access to low-cost, high-quality health care options through Collective Health and Kaiser (due to coverage limitations, Kaiser is currently only available in CA & CO).
• Access to a 401k to help save for the future.
• Vacation policy to rest and recharge.
• 8 days of fully-paid sick leave, to take the time to heal and or recover.
• Family-friendly benefits, including 12 weeks of parental leave for non-birthing parents and 18-20 weeks for birthing parents; 2-week ramp-up period for when employees return from a leave of 6 weeks or more; as well as employer-paid short-term and long-term disability, employer-sponsored life insurance, fertility and caregiving benefits.
• Well-rounded wellness benefits including free and low cost mental health resources and financial wellbeing support services.
• Education benefits and tuition assistance to help your future development and growth.