Head Of Data Science & Credit Risk

About the role

We are seeking a senior leader to own the strategy and execution of machine‑learning‑powered underwriting and credit risk decisioning across fast‑growing markets. Based in the United Arab Emirates, you will manage the full lifecycle of risk models while shaping credit policies and responsible lending practices.

Key responsibilities

• Lead design, testing, deployment, and continuous improvement of ML models for credit decisioning, fraud detection, risk segmentation and marketing attribution.
• Develop underwriting algorithms using alternative data to expand access while managing risk.
• Build and scale real‑time or near‑real‑time scoring models across multiple markets and products.
• Ensure model governance, interpretability, fairness and monitor performance, drift and feature stability.
• Establish strong MLOps practices for experimentation, versioning, deployment and production monitoring.
• Define credit risk frameworks, policies, approval strategies and risk thresholds tailored to each market.
• Track portfolio metrics, set early‑warning indicators and lead stress testing and expected credit loss modeling.
• Mentor and grow a high‑performing team of data scientists and risk analysts while staying hands‑on with technical challenges.

Required profile

• 10+ years of experience in data science, machine learning and consumer credit risk, preferably in fintech, digital lending or BNPL.
• Proven track record of building, deploying and monitoring production ML models in real‑time decisioning environments.
• Hands‑on experience with experimentation, A/B testing and statistical analysis.
• Strong commercial judgment and ability to link technical decisions to portfolio performance and growth.
• Startup mindset with adaptability to fast‑changing priorities.

Required skills

• SQL
• Machine learning model development and deployment
• Cloud data platforms (e.g., GCP BigQuery)
• MLOps tools such as MLflow
• Production machine learning and real‑time scoring
• A/B testing and experimentation
• Statistical and mathematical techniques

What we offer

• Competitive salary and equity participation.
• Leadership opportunity to build a data science and credit risk function from the ground up.
• Professional growth in a fast‑growing fintech with international scope.
• Modern ML stack and cloud‑based infrastructure.
• Mission‑driven environment focused on expanding responsible financial services.