Lead Data Scientist

Mastercard; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Mastercard, a global payments technology company, seeks a Lead Data Scientist in Salt Lake City to guide the data science and analytics team. You will design and deploy production-grade ML models for financial applications, including transaction classification and risk analysis, while leading a team of engineers and researchers.

The role emphasizes leadership, collaboration with stakeholders, and practical NLP, statistical modeling, and AI techniques to drive business impact.

Qualifications

• Experience leading data science teams and projects.
• Proven track record deploying ML models in production.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and grow the data science team and tech stack focused on production-grade services.
• Plan and direct data science / ML projects within the team.
• Design and implement ML models for financial applications including transaction classification and risk modeling.
• Measure, validate, and improve performance of ML models.
• Present technical problems and findings to business leaders and clients.

Skills

Data science leadership

ML model development

NLP / text analytics

SQL / Database

Kubernetes / Docker

Python / Sklearn / Pandas

Education

PhD or MS in CS/IT/Engineering/Math/Statistics

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

REST APIs

TensorFlow

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 and 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

Lead Data Scientist

Who is Mastercard?

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.

Overview

Finicity, a Mastercard company, is leading the Open Banking Initiative to increase the Financial Health of consumers and businesses. The Data Science and Analytics team is looking for a Lead Data Scientist. The Data Science team works on Intelligent Decisioning; Financial Certainty; Attribute, Feature, and Entity Resolution; Verification Solutions and much more. Join our team to make an impact across all sectors of the economy by consistently innovating and problem-solving. The ideal candidate is passionate about leveraging data to provide high quality customer solutions. Also, the candidate is a strong technical leader who is extremely motivated, intellectually curious, analytical, and possesses an entrepreneurial mindset.

Role

• Lead, mentor and grow the data science team and tech stack focused on developing production-grade services and capabilities
• Plan and direct data science / machine learning projects within the team.
• Design and implement machine learning models for a number of financial applications including but not limited to: Transaction Classification, Temporal Analysis, Risk modeling from structured and unstructured data.
• Measure, validate, implement, monitor and improve performance of both internal and external facing machine learning models.
• Apply various Machine learning (i.e. SVM, Radom Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, CATBoost etc), Deep learning techniques (i.e. LSTM, RNN, Transformer etc.) and LLMs to solve analytical problem statements.
• Propose creative solutions to existing challenges that are new to the company, the financial industry and to data science.
• Present technical problems and findings to business leaders internally and to clients succinctly and clearly.
• Leverage best practices in machine learning and data engineering to develop scalable solutions.
• Identify areas where resources fall short of needs and provide thoughtful and sustainable solutions to benefit the team
• Be a strong, confident, and excellent writer and speaker, able to communicate your vision and roadmap effectively to a wide variety of stakeholders

All about you:

• Experience mentoring and leading data science teams
• Substantial experience in data science/ machine learning model development and deployments
• Exposure to financial transactional structured and unstructured data, transaction classification, risk evaluation and credit risk modeling is a plus.
• A strong understanding of NLP, Statistical Modeling, Visualization and advanced Data Science techniques/methods.
• Gain insights from text, including non-language tokens and use the thought process of annotations in text analysis.
• Solve problems that are new to the company, the financial industry and to data science
• SQL / Database experience is preferred
• Experience with Kubernetes, Containers, Docker, REST APIs, Event Streams or other delivery mechanisms.
• Familiarity with relevant technologies (e.g. GenAI, LLMs, Agentic AI, TensorFlow, Python, Sklearn, Pandas, etc.).
• Strong desire to collaborate and ability to come up with creative solutions.
• Finance and FinTech experience preferred.
• PhD or Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, M.S preferred

Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. 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 identif