Sr. Manager, Data Science & ML Platform

Department Overview

The Technology team @ Oportun is dedicated to delivering and maintaining performant, elegant, and intuitive systems to our business partners and retail customers. We work on a very unique platform, combining service-oriented platform services with sophisticated user experiences, all enabled through a best-in-class (and fun to use!) automated development infrastructure. We prove that FinTech is more fun, more challenging, and in our case, more rewarding as we build technology that changes our customers’ lives. Oportun serves customers in English and Spanish, online and over the phone in 29 states, and in-person at more than 330 retail locations in 9 of those states.

With the launch of the OPRT Development Center in India in December 2019, Oportun embraced a global approach to innovation. Our technology development center plays a critical role in developing and improving Oportun technology, analytics, and systems including technology for financial products, enhancing our customer experience and supporting our mobile servicing platform. Based in Chennai, the ODC is an essential building block of Oportun’s technology-driven business which we aim to grow into the hub of technology and innovation for Oportun, furthering our mission-based, technology-powered approach to providing inclusive, affordable, and empowering financial services.

Responsibilities

• Develop data products and models used in managing credit/fraud risk and customer lifetime valuation and provide frictionless customer experience for various products and services Oportun provides.
• Build end-to-end reusable pipelines from data acquisition to model output delivery through partnership with data and production engineering teams.
• Support the development of automated monitoring tools which can enables us to make almost real-time assessment of the performance of models and rules, and extract insights.
• Lead initiatives to drive business value from start to finish including project planning, communication and stakeholder management.
• Lead discussions with Compliance, Bank Partners and Model Risk Management teams to facilitate the Model Governance Activities such as Model Validations and Monitoring.
• Lead, coach and partner with the DS and non-DS team to deliver results.
• Communicate and partner with third party data vendors.

Qualifications

• A relentless problem solver and out of the box thinker with a proven track record of driving business results in a timely manner.
• Comfortable in a high-growth, fast-paced and agile environment.
• Master’s degree or PhD in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering or Economics or other quantitative discipline (Bachelor’s degree with significant relevant experience will be considered).
• 5+ years data science experience in developing and deploying Machine Learning models.
• Hands on experience leveraging machine learning techniques such as Gradient Boosting, Clustering, Logistic Regression and Neural Network to solve real world problems.
• 5+years of hands-on experience with data extraction, cleaning, analysis and building reusable data pipelines; Proficient in SQL, Spark SQL and/or Hive.
• 7+ years of experience in designing, developing and leveraging model platform and MLOp; proficient in Python/Pyspark.
• 2+ year of experience in people management.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Strong stakeholder management and project management skills.
• Experience working with AWS EMR, Sage-maker or other cloud-based platforms is a plus.
• Engineering and SW development experience is a plus.