Our Story
Hello there. We’re Zopa. Our diverse team is united in their mission of creating simple, fair and honest financial products that have the customer’s needs at their heart. We’re proud that this dedication is reflected in our excellent rating on TrustPilot. We’ve always been unapologetically honest with our customers, and value the same in return. Their feedback helps us shape what we build, so we can provide a bank fit for today, and for the future. We’re not the new kids on the block though - we’ve been a pioneering force in finance for 16 years. In 2005, we built the first ever peer-to-peer (P2P) lending company, giving our customers access to loans built for real-life and intelligent investments backed by cutting-edge tech. In 2020, we launched Zopa Bank, meaning we could offer more – like fixed term savings backed by FSCS protection and a credit card to help customers take control of their finances. Today, our bank and our P2P business run alongside each other, with the same ethos and the same mission. We’ve lent out over £6 billion and are proud to have made money work better for over half a million people across the UK, whether they were looking to borrow, save or invest. If you embrace being challenged beyond the norm, aren’t afraid to think differently and are motivated by working somewhere you can really make an impact, you’ll love life here at Zopa.
At Zopa, data and the application of machine learning is at the heart of what we do and the products we bring to market. Within consumer financial services we have pioneered modern data science techniques. We’ve been using advanced ML models for more than 5 years and today more than 98% of our lending decisions are driven by ML models. We are constantly innovating and using new data and ML techniques. Recently we’ve deployed deep learning models to assess credit risk and the current focus is on the interpretability of ML models (read about our work with AWS team here ).
A Day In The Life
- You will be responsible for all machine learning and statistical models across the company, with applications in credit decisioning, fraud detection, customer engagement and operations strategy.
- You will drive innovation using new data sources for the benefit of our customers and business.
- Reporting to our Head of Data & Analytics, you will define the roadmap and priorities for the Data Science Team in alignment with the company strategy.
- Lead and coordinate the cross-functional efforts to deliver data science related projects ensuring a high standard of quality and governance of the models and data products.
- You will also be passionate about furthering our competitive advantage in data science by leading new R&D into our data science methods and technology stack and will empower the team to develop their capabilities.
You Are
- Passionate about innovative data and machine learning applications to drive positive outcomes for our customers and business
- Excited by driving many exciting data projects at both a strategic and tactical level
- A great mentor to a team of talented data scientists and the broader analytics community
You Will Have
- Strong analytical and problem solving skills
- Hands on experience with the PyData tech stack and mainstream machine learning frameworks
- In-depth knowledge of ML algorithms from linear models to deep learning
- Extensive knowledge of the full ML development lifecycle including: experiment design, feature engineering, HPO, validation, deployment and monitoring
- Extensive experience of statistical analytics, data visualisation and storytelling
- Experience of managing data scientists and leading ML projects into production
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills to partner with product owners and business heads
- Hands on experience of working with cross functional teams
It Would Be Great If You Also Had
- Experience with Cloud services (ideally AWS) for data scientists
- Knowledge of microservice architecture and use of CI/CD pipelines for the deployment of data science products on real-time platform
- Knowledge in survival analysis, causal inference and explainable AI
To Thrive Here, You’ll Need To
- Champion our customers. Whatever your role, you’ll be close to our customers. We care passionately about doing the best for them.
- Help us make fearless choices. Our environment is fast-paced, agile and open. You’ll solve interesting and challenging problems, and be trusted and empowered to bring your ideas to life.
- Walk the talk. Like us, you’ll be honest, stick to your promises and face the tough moments head-on.
- Win smarter. You’ll be always on the lookout for a better way of doing things, going beyond ‘good enough’ and welcoming different points of view.
- Be in it together. You’ll join an ambitious, diverse and all-round approachable team with a mix of ideas and talents who inspire each other to be better every day.