Vice President, Data Science

Mastercard; Toronto; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading global technology company in the payments industry seeks a Vice President to provide strategic leadership and oversee key business functions. The role involves managing data science teams, driving innovation, and enhancing data quality. Ideal candidates will have extensive experience in data science, machine learning, and a proven track record in leadership. Join us to help shape the future of digital payments and contribute to a sustainable economy.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to develop and execute data science strategies.
• Experience leading GenAI initiatives focused on leveraging capabilities of ChatGPT.
• Several years as a senior-level data scientist developing ML solutions.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic leadership and direction overseeing key business functions.
• Manage a team of data scientists ensuring operational excellence.
• Develop and implement strategic initiatives aligning departmental goals.

Skills

Leadership

Data Science

Machine Learning

Natural Language Processing

Collaboration

Tools

Python

R

SQL

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Azure

Hadoop

Snowflake

Job description

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart, and accessible. Our technology, innovation, partnerships, and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses, and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships, and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential.

Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.

Services within Mastercard are responsible for acquiring, engaging, and retaining customers by managing fraud and risk, enhancing cybersecurity, and improving the digital payments experience. We provide value-added services and leverage expertise, data-driven insights, and execution. Do you have a passion for developing products using leading-edge technology that solve key industry pain points?

Role:

The Vice President will provide strategic leadership and direction, overseeing key business functions to drive growth and innovation. This role involves managing a team of data scientists and analysts in cross-functional teams, ensuring operational excellence, and fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement. The Vice President will develop and implement strategic initiatives, align departmental goals with the organisation’s vision, and maintain strong relationships with stakeholders. The ideal candidate will possess exceptional leadership skills, a deep understanding of the industry, and the ability to translate strategic objectives into actionable plans.

You will also lead a team of highly skilled data science analysts in data quality initiatives and tasks in a multi-product environment. You will drive excellence in execution, automation, and identify new and novel ways to enhance the overall data quality of our products and business processes.

You’ve been involved in defining AI strategies and aligning those strategies to data, product, and business strategies to support and enhance the overall success of those strategies. You will contribute to the overall data strategy for the organization and assist with the strategy to align our data and processes with the AI strategy and lead the incorporation of AI for revenue generation, process optimization, and data quality.

All About You:

• Proven ability to develop and execute data science strategies that align with business goals and objectives.
• Deep understanding of data science principles, algorithms, and techniques including supervised and unsupervised learning, deep learning, natural language processing, with extensive knowledge of the low-level details behind these algorithms.
• Recent experience leading GenAI initiatives focused on leveraging the latest capabilities of ChatGPT, Gemini, or similar.
• Several years of prior experience as a senior-level data scientist developing and deploying machine learning and deep learning solutions end-to-end (data exploration to deployment).
• Skilled in recruiting, mentoring, and managing high-performing teams.
• Passionate about leveraging advanced analytics and machine learning to drive innovation.
• Strong track record of partnering with senior leadership and cross-functional teams.
• Exceptional ability to convey complex technical information to diverse audiences.
• Focused on defining OKRs, KPIs, and metrics to measure the impact and effectiveness of product workflows and data science projects.
• Ability to translate data insights into strategic business recommendations.
• Ensures adherence to data governance policies and standards.
• Ability to explain complex algorithms and results to a variety of audiences.

Experience working:

• Previously as a data scientist with experience in Python, R programming, ML frameworks (Scikit-learn), and Deep Learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Preferably in the AzureML suite of machine learning technologies or prior experience with either AWS or Google machine learning tools and technologies.
• With technologies such as SQL, SAP HANA, Hadoop, Snowflake, Linux, Azure, Azure Machine Learning, Databricks, Apache Spark (PySpark/Scala).
• With analysts to build reporting and dashboards for business use cases.
• With data analysis, statistical analysis, and the ability to convey complex analysis to broad audiences.
• In a cloud-based big data environment and deploying machine learning models at scale.
• With source control, production and non-production environments, and automated build and deployment.

Ideally, you have experience in banking, e-commerce, credit cards, or payment processing, and exposure to both SaaS and premises-based architectures. Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal-opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disability, or veteran status. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact [e-mail] and specify your needs. Do not include medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team will respond promptly.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks come with an inherent risk to the organization. Therefore, every person working for or on behalf of Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the accessed information;
• Report any suspected information security violations or breaches;
• Complete all mandatory security trainings per Mastercard’s guidelines.