Senior Data Scientist - AI/ML for Fintech Growth (Remote)

Rainfall Ventures; United States; Remote; USD 192,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working culture

Incentive programs

Unlimited PTO

Generous parental leave

401k match

Job summary

Zip is seeking a Staff Data Scientist to lead ML/AI initiatives for new financial product capabilities. You will own end-to-end model development, from exploration to production, mentor junior data scientists, and partner with engineers to scale solutions.

You will work on ambiguous, 0-to-1 problems, shape evaluation frameworks, and balance short-term impact with long-term strategic research to maximize business value.

Qualifications

• PhD in a quantitative field or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years of data science experience.
• 4+ years of data science experience in financial services.
• Proficiency with Python and SQL; Spark/PySpark a plus.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the analytical strategy for new Zip product initiatives and growth of financial products.
• Develop insights, measurement frameworks, and analytics foundations to guide product strategy and risk trade-offs.
• Build ML/AI solutions end-to-end, mentor junior data scientists, and collaborate with engineering for production deployment.
• Establish evaluation frameworks and decision criteria for scaling or stopping models.
• Provide technical direction to data science teams and design experiments to inform model development.
• Balance short-term wins with long-term exploratory work to maximize business value.

Education

PhD preferred

Tools

Python

SQL

Spark/PySpark

Job description

Zip is seeking a Staff Data Scientist to lead ML/AI initiatives for new financial product capabilities. You will own end-to-end model development, from exploration to production, mentor junior data scientists, and partner with engineers to scale solutions.

You will work on ambiguous, 0-to-1 problems, shape evaluation frameworks, and balance short-term impact with long-term strategic research to maximize business value.