Lead AI Data Scientist - Merchant Lead-Scoring Platform

paynada; United States; Remote; USD 70,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful equity participation

Remote work with autonomy

Benefits package

Job summary

paynada is seeking a data-science leader to design and drive a proprietary merchant lead-intelligence platform. You will shape data collection, labeling, and how qualitative insights become quantitative predictions, starting with limited data and evolving into a production-ready system.

Remote role with substantial autonomy, equity participation and a competitive salary. You will partner with sales leadership to integrate AI-driven lead recommendations and build the prototype advancing toward a

Qualifications

• Advanced training or equivalent professional experience in data science, applied statistics, ML, CS, econometrics or related field.
• Experience with predictive modeling, propensity modeling, lead scoring or classification/ranking problems.
• Strong Python and SQL capabilities.
• Experience with unstructured text, transcripts, conversation analytics or NLP.

Responsibilities

• Define the data/AI strategy for a proprietary merchant lead-intelligence platform.
• Analyze sales conversations using transcription, NLP, large language models and qualitative research.
• Create a framework to extract merchant characteristics, switching triggers and outcomes from calls.
• Interview sales reps and leadership to capture domain knowledge not in data.
• Design labeling and quality-control for transcripts and outcomes.
• Identify signals predicting sales progression and deals.
• Develop a transparent rules-based scoring model; later ML models as data grows.
• Evaluate external data sources to reveal merchant attributes.
• Connect internal insights to external business signals for prospecting.

Skills

Data science

Predictive modeling

Python

SQL

NLP / transcripts

LLMs

Experimental design

Data collection / validation

Qualitative + quantitative analysis

Independent work / leadership

Security / confidentiality

Education

Advanced degree or equivalent experience

Tools

Speech-to-text

Embeddings

Retrieval systems

LLM evaluation

Job description

paynada is seeking a data-science leader to design and drive a proprietary merchant lead-intelligence platform. You will shape data collection, labeling, and how qualitative insights become quantitative predictions, starting with limited data and evolving into a production-ready system.

Remote role with substantial autonomy, equity participation and a competitive salary. You will partner with sales leadership to integrate AI-driven lead recommendations and build the prototype advancing toward a