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.

Requirements

• 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

This role offers a competitive total compensation package, including a base salary of $140,000 - $190,000 and 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.

Schedule

Our home and headquarters are in Denver, but some of our roles allow for remote work, allowing us to reach the best talent across the US. This role can sit in any of the following 32 states: AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, NC, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI and Washington D.C.