Remote-First Principal Data Scientist — Credit Risk & ML

Forward Financing LLC; Boston (MA); On-site; CAD 208,000 - 286,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

Flexible time-off

Paid parental leave

RRSP match

Welfare reimbursement

Volunteering days

Annual professional development budget

Charitable donation match

Job summary

Forward Financing is seeking a Principal Data Scientist to set the technical vision for data science and drive high-impact initiatives from concept to production. As the senior IC, you will shape multi-year roadmaps and serve as a trusted advisor to leadership, building scalable models for risk, pricing, and forecasting.

You will mentor data scientists, enforce coding standards, and partner with Portfolio Strategy, Engineering, Product, and Underwriting to deliver measurable business impact.

Qualifications

• 10+ years hands-on model development and deployment experience.
• Deep experience building credit risk/underwriting models in fintech or financial services.
• Experience with real-time models, decisioning engines, and production pipelines.
• Expert in Python, SQL and Git; cloud deployment on platforms like AWS.
• Ability to influence technical direction and mentor senior technical talent.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of complex statistical and ML models.
• Drive end-to-end delivery of flagship data science initiatives from problem framing to production.
• Define architecture for Forward's modeling ecosystem including risk, pricing, and loss forecasting.
• Partner with senior leaders to shape the data science roadmap and opportunities.
• Define and enforce standard practices for model development, validation, and documentation.

Skills

Python

SQL

Git

Machine Learning

Cloud (AWS)

SageMaker

GLM

Gradient Boosting

Deep Learning

Education

Bachelor's degree in Financial/Applied Math, Operations Research, Economics, and/or Statistics

Tools

SageMaker

Metaflow

Snowflake

Databricks

Job description

Forward Financing is seeking a Principal Data Scientist to set the technical vision for data science and drive high-impact initiatives from concept to production. As the senior IC, you will shape multi-year roadmaps and serve as a trusted advisor to leadership, building scalable models for risk, pricing, and forecasting.

You will mentor data scientists, enforce coding standards, and partner with Portfolio Strategy, Engineering, Product, and Underwriting to deliver measurable business impact.