AVP - Data Science (Personal Banking)

At RAKBANK, we believe in fostering a culture of innovation, growth, and excellence. We are not just a bank – we are a community that thrives on teamwork, cutting-edge solutions, and the highest standards of governance. Now, we’re looking for a dynamic AVP-Data Science to join our personal banking team at Dubai Silicon Oasis, where you'll lead the way building interactive applications using Flask, Django, or RShiny (a major plus). Experience in batch and real-time production deployment is required.

Job Purpose:

The AVP - Data Science will drive data-driven decisions across critical business functions such as customer engagement, marketing, retention, risk management, and product development. This role is pivotal in designing and developing AI-ML solutions to tackle complex, open-ended problems. The ideal candidate is a data science enthusiast with strong analytical skills and experience in open-source technologies like Python (required), R (preferred), Spark (preferred), and SAS (preferred). The role also requires expertise in building interactive applications using Flask, Django, or RShiny (a major plus), and experience in batch and real-time production deployment (required). The candidate must be proficient in delivery planning, execution, stakeholder communication, and maintaining best practices for high reproducibility.

What you will do:

• Work with Data Science team to translate given business problem into analytical use-cases with defined outcomes to develop, implement and test most appropriate algorithms for a given use-case.
• Work closely with Business Analyst for requirement gathering/understanding and work with Data Engineers to build data pipelines and automate/production Alize complex ML models to insights and recommendations.
• Strong conceptual understanding of machine learning algorithms including multi-variate regressions, classification algorithms, time series techniques, clustering, NLP, Image Processing, and optimization models, etc.
• Ensure high coding standards as well as designing standards to ensure reproducibility.
• Drive innovation by enhancing existing solutions and designing new ones and build collaboration and awareness in the bank’s analytics community.
• Work closely with various business units/stakeholders to identify and streamline the AI-ML use-cases.
• Deliver end-to-end AI-ML models from development to deployment with delivery planning, communications with stakeholders, and ensuring efficient usage of the models by the business as recommendations for improving decision touchpoints.
• Ensure high coding standards, peer-review, and transparency in the work with the line of reporting.

Technical Skills:

• Strong ML skills using Python (+ R, SAS, Spark)
• SQL
• Strong coding skills using Python.
• Knowledge on Retail Banking Products

Competencies:

• Expert-level proficiency in Python with SAS/R/Spark as plus
• Deployment experience (various databases, server/cloud environment: AWS, Azure, and APIs, ODBCs, web apps)
• Excellent knowledge of Banking Functional Knowledge (major plus)
• Good written, oral communication, documentation skills with ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders.
• Understanding of banking products, functional knowledge is a major plus.

Qualifications:

What you will bring:

• University Degree in IT or equivalent
• At least overall 7+ years of experience in analytics, data science or similar function
• 3-4 years of experience in banking analytics (personal banking experience is key).
• Python and SQL experience required
• Worked on end-to-end ML model deployment