Blair West is supporting an investor-backed fintech start-up with an all-female founding team, in their search for a talented and experienced Data Science Lead (Credit Risk). In this role, you will design and build innovative credit default models, and the data pipelines that support them. As one of their first hires, you will be a key player in this dedicated and hard-working team, who are passionately working towards ensuring equitable access to credit for everyone. Located in an iconic building in Newcastle’s creative quarter, the business is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, and fosters a collaborative and supportive ‘one team’ culture rooted in respect for everyone.

The opportunity:

• You will own the development of alternative data credit default models, innovating towards exploratory and innovative approaches, and building related scorecards.
• Alongside the founders, you will craft and shape the direction of the data strategy.
• You will be accountable for the development of a programme of continuous improvement.
• Robustly testing your credit default models, you will build a solid evidence base that will stand up to regulatory scrutiny.
• You will manage stakeholder relationships with key advisors, investors, and contribute towards fundraising rounds in collaboration with the founders.

You’ll be the ideal candidate for this role if you have:

• At least 5 years’ experience working at a Credit Reference Agency, or a related field, and have deep knowledge of the associated regulatory frameworks.
• Previous experience building consumer credit risk scorecards.
• Experience working with Open Banking data and categorisations.
• Experience of, or a strong desire to work within, a fast-moving early-stage technology business, and the ability to do whatever is needed to ensure success.
• Deep knowledge of Python and the Python data science ecosystem: Pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, scikit-learn, with proven experience extracting features from time-series datasets. You will be working in a stack consisting of: Angular, Typescript, AWS, SQL, Python, and Pandas
• Experience with the full ML delivery lifecycle: designing, training, validating, deploying, and monitoring ML models.
• A commercial savvy mindset and a strong focus on shaping business objectives and delivering against them.
• The ability to flex around shifting requirements, always delivering excellence; you will be extremely comfortable with ambiguity.

Our commitment:

Blair West is an equal-opportunity employer. We embrace diversity and inclusion at every stage of the recruitment process. We are committed to fairness, equality, and ongoing diversity training for our team to give our candidates and clients a feeling of belonging during their experience with us. If you require reasonable adjustments at any stage during their experience with us, please speak to their consultant.

If you’d like to speak to someone about this opportunity:

Duncan Fraser: [email protected] / 07821128661