Head of Data Science & Credit Risk

About the role

This is a greenfield leadership opportunity in a mission‑driven fintech expanding fair and accessible financial services. As Head of Data Science & Credit Risk you will shape the ML‑powered underwriting and credit decisioning strategy across fast‑growing markets, owning the full lifecycle of risk models from development to measurable business impact.

Key responsibilities

• Lead design, testing, deployment and continuous improvement of machine‑learning models for credit decisioning, fraud detection and risk segmentation.
• Develop underwriting algorithms using alternative data while ensuring responsible lending.
• Build and scale real‑time scoring models across multiple markets and products.
• Establish model governance, monitoring, drift detection and MLOps practices.
• Define credit risk frameworks, policies, approval strategies and market‑specific risk thresholds.
• Mentor and grow a high‑performing team of data scientists and risk analysts.

Required profile

• 10+ years of experience in data science, machine learning and consumer credit risk, preferably in fintech or digital lending.
• Proven track record building, deploying and monitoring production ML models in real‑time environments.
• Strong statistical foundation combined with modern ML techniques.
• Hands‑on experience with experimentation, A/B testing and business impact analysis.
• Excellent communication skills to convey complex models and risk concepts to non‑technical stakeholders.

Required skills

• SQL
• Machine Learning
• MLOps
• Exploratory Data Analysis
• Statistical Techniques
• Real‑time Decisioning
• Underwriting Algorithms
• IFRS 9 and Local Credit Regulations
• GCP BigQuery (useful)
• MLflow (plus)

What we offer

• Competitive salary and equity participation.
• Opportunity to build and shape a growing data‑science and credit‑risk function.
• Professional growth in a fast‑paced, international fintech environment.
• Modern ML stack and cloud‑based data infrastructure.
• Impactful work that expands responsible financial access for under‑banked employees.