Senior Data Scientist

Oportun (Nasdaq: OPRT) is a mission-driven fintech that puts its 2.0 million members' financial goals within reach. With intelligent borrowing, savings, and budgeting capabilities, Oportun empowers members with the confidence to build a better financial future. Since inception, Oportun has provided more than $16.6 billion in responsible and affordable credit, saved its members more than $2.4 billion in interest and fees, and helped its members save an average of more than $1,800 annually. Oportun has been certified as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) since 2009.

Working at Oportun means enjoying a differentiated experience of being part of a team that fosters a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture where we all feel a sense of belonging and are encouraged to share our perspectives. This inclusive culture is directly connected to our organization's performance and ability to fulfill our mission of delivering affordable credit to those left out of the financial mainstream. We celebrate and nurture our inclusive culture through our employee resource groups.

POSITION OVERVIEW

We are growing our world-class team of mission-driven, entrepreneurial Data Scientists who are passionate about broadening financial inclusion by untapping insights from non-traditional data. Be part of the team responsible for developing and enhancing Oportun’s core intellectual property used in scoring risk for underbanked consumers that lack a traditional credit bureau score. In this role you will be on the cutting edge working with large and diverse (i.e. data from dozens of sources including transactional, mobile, utility, and other financial services) alternative data sets and utilize machine learning and statistical modeling to build scores and strategies for managing risk, collection/loss mitigation, and fraud. You will also drive growth and optimize marketing spend across channels by leveraging alternative data to help predict which consumers would likely be interested in Oportun’s affordable, credit building loan product. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Develop data products and machine learning models used in Risk, Fraud, Collections, and portfolio management, and provide frictionless customer experience for various products and services Oportun provides.
• Build accurate and automated monitoring tools which can help us to keep a close eye on the performance of the models and rules.
• Build model deployment platform which can shorten the time of implementing new models.
• Build end-to-end reusable pipelines from data acquisition to model output delivery.
• 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.

QUALIFICATIONS

• A relentless problem solver and out of the box thinker with a proven track record of driving business results in a timely manner
• 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).
• Hands on experience leveraging machine learning techniques such as Gradient Boosting, Logistic Regression and Neural Network to solve real world problems
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with data extraction, cleaning, analysis and building reusable data pipelines; Proficient in SQL, Spark SQL and/or Hive
• 3+ years of experience in leveraging modern machine learning toolset and programming languages such as Python
• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• Strong stakeholder management and project management skills

• Comfortable in a high-growth, fast-paced, agile environment 
• Experience working with AWS EMR, Sage-maker or other cloud-based platforms is a plus
• Experience with HDFS, Hive, Shell script and other big data tools is a plus

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We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and consider all qualified applicants for employment opportunities without regard to race, age, color, religion, gender, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status or any other category protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.

California applicants can find a copy of Oportun's CCPA Notice here:  https://oportun.com/privacy/california-privacy-notice/.

We will never request personal identifiable information (bank, credit card, etc.) before you are hired. We do not charge you for pre-employment fees such as background checks, training, or equipment. If you think you have been a victim of fraud by someone posing as us, please report your experience to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).