Lead Data Scientist - Data Payments

GoTo; Singapore; On-site; SGD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

GoTo is seeking a senior data scientist for the GoPay Data Science team in Singapore. You will develop and optimize personalization and recommendation models to drive discovery and engagement across GoPay products. Engage with product and engineering to design, test, and deploy ML pipelines in production.

You will prototype quickly, run A/B tests, analyze online/offline metrics, and iterate to improve ranking, CTR, and conversions using large-scale behavioral data.

Qualifications

• 6–8 years of relevant experience in applied data science or ML roles.
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks (Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Solid understanding of ML fundamentals: supervised learning, ranking, embeddings, evaluation metrics.
• Experience with large-scale datasets on Spark, MaxCompute, or similar.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities with actionable outputs.
• Excellent communication to partner with cross-functional teams.
• Master’s or Ph.D. in a quantitative field is a plus.
• Hands-on experience with search, recommendation, or ads systems and improvements.
• Familiarity with LLMs/LLVMs and integrating them into pipelines is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build data science solutions within a cross-functional team to boost engagement and transactions.
• Rapidly prototype DS solutions and contribute to product discussions.
• Analyze large datasets and generate actionable insights.
• Own end-to-end delivery from problem formulation to deployment with engineers.
• Present findings at conferences and workshops.
• Design algorithms for search, recommendation, or advertising to drive discovery and conversion.
• Develop user behavior and ranking models using LLMs/LLVMs for better matching.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and DS teams to deploy scalable solutions.

Skills

Python

Analytical skills

Communication

English proficiency

Self-motivated

ML fundamentals

Product intuition

Problem solving

Education

Master’s or Ph.D. in a quantitative discipline

Tools

Spark

MaxCompute

LLMs/LLVMs integration

Job description

About the Role

Develop and optimize personalization and recommendation models to deliver relevant offers, merchants, and experiences to GoPay users.Apply a range of DS techniques—such as collaborative filtering, ranking models, embeddings, and graph-based methods to improve discovery and user engagement. Work closely with product and engineering teams to design, test, and deploy end-to-end ML pipelines in production.Prototype rapidly, run A/B tests, and analyze online/offline metrics (CTR, conversion rate, NDCG, recall@k, etc.) to evaluate model performance and business impact.Leverage large-scale behavioral and transactional data to uncover insights and guide feature design and personalization strategies.Contribute to continuous improvement by monitoring model performance, identifying data or algorithmic gaps, and iterating based on real-world feedback.Collaborate cross-functionally with other data scientists and engineers to share best practices, improve our personalization infrastructure, and align with GoTo’s broader personalization roadmap.

What You Will Do

• Work as part of a cross-functional team of engineers, product managers and business analysts to build data science solutions that build customer engagement and help grow GoPay’s customer base and transactions.
• Rapidly prototype data science solutions and be involved in product and feature discussions
• Analyze large volume data and generate insights which will be actionable.
• Own end-to-end solutioning, from formulating the technical problem to deployment (along with engineers) of the solution
• Participate in internal and external conferences and workshops.
• Design and implement algorithms for search, recommendation, or advertising systems to drive discovery and conversion across Goto products.
• Build advanced user behaviour models and query/assortment understanding models using LLMs and LLVMs to improve matching accuracy between users, queries, and items across search and recommendation systems.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and business-facing data science teams to define problems, run experiments, and deploy solutions at scale.

What You Will Need

• 6–8 years of relevant experience in applied data science or machine learning roles.
• Proficiency in Python, and familiarity with ML frameworks such as Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.
• Solid understanding of ML fundamentals including supervised learning, ranking, embeddings, and evaluation metrics.
• Experience working with large-scale datasets using platforms such as Spark, MaxCompute (MC), or other distributed data environments.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate complex data insights into actionable recommendations.
• Good communication skills to engage with cross-functional partners and present results clearly.
• Master’s or Ph.D. in a quantitative discipline (e.g., Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or related field) is a plus.
• Hands‑on experience with search/ recommendation/ads systems, with proven improvements to ranking, retrieval, or ad targeting models.
• Familiarity with LLMs and/or LLVMs, with experience integrating them into search or recommendation pipelines a strong plus.
• Demonstrated ability to innovate with new algorithms or tools and drive measurable impact, especially making use of Large language Models (LLMs) and Large Language and Vision models (LLVMs) in search modeling or recommendation modeling
• Strong product intuition and ability to reason from user behavior data and traffic patterns.
• Good communication skills in English, both written and verbal.
• Self‑motivated, curious, and excited by the opportunity to build high‑impact systems quickly.

About the Team

GoPay Data Science team builds critical ML components/models which go into the engineering systems which make GoPay a safe, trusted and fun way to do payments. Our team members come from varied backgrounds, and bring with them a wide set of skills (mathematics, statistics, machine learning, deep learning etc) which we use some of the toughest business problems in GoPay. We are enthusiastic about both data science techniques and methods, as well as the business impact of our models, and have numerous internal forums where sharing, discussions and presentations by the team members happen.

About GoTo Group

GoTo is the largest digital ecosystem in Indonesia. GoTo's mission is 'empower progress' by offering technology infrastructure and solutions that help everyone to access and thrive in the digital economy.

The GoTo ecosystem provides a wide range of services, including mobility, delivery, payments, financial services, and technology solutions for merchants. The ecosystem also provides e-commerce services through Tokopedia and banking services through its partnership with Bank Jago.

About Gojek

Gojek is Southeast Asia’s leading on-demand platform and pioneer of the multi-service ecosystem with over 2.5 million driver partners across the regions offering a wide range of services such as transportation, food delivery, logistics and more. With its mission to create impact at scale, Gojek is committed to resolving consumer problems and raising standards of living by connecting consumers to the best providers of goods and services in the market.

About GoTo Financial

GoTo Financial accelerates financial inclusion through its leading financial services and merchants solutions. Its consumer services include GoPay and GoPayLater and serve businesses of all sizes through Midtrans, Moka, GoBiz Plus, GoBiz, and Selly. With its trusted and inclusive ecosystem of products, GoTo Financial is open to new growth opportunities and aims to empower everyone to Make It Happen, Make It Together, Make It Last.