About the role.

We are looking for an exceptional Data Science Manager to lead and grow our data science capability, driving the development, deployment, and optimisation of machine-learning solutions that support Zilch’s mission to deliver responsible, real-time and seamless credit experiences.

This is a leadership role that involves line management of experienced data scientists, while staying hands-on technically. We are looking for someone who can drive production-grade predictive insights across our payments ecosystem and ensure the team delivers measurable business impact.

In this role, you will lead a team of data scientists and work closely with product, engineering, risk, operations, and commercial teams to build impactful models that power personalisation, customer engagement, fraud detection, credit decisioning, and growth initiatives.

You will ensure our modelling efforts are production-ready, robust, ethically sound, and aligned with strategic objectives. This is a hands-on leadership role: you will mentor the team, contribute to technical direction, and help ensure successful model deployment and monitoring in a fast-moving fintech environment.

Role Responsibilities.

• Lead a high-performing Data Science team that ships and owns predictive models in production, focused on payments products, fraud detection, risk modelling, customer analytics, and product optimisation.
• Work with Product, Risk, Engineering, Operations, and commercial stakeholders to translate business goals into modelling strategies that improve customer outcomes.
• Coach Data Scientists to become more effective and take on new responsibilities, fostering career growth and technical excellence.
• Ensure Data Science work aligns with company objectives via a visible, prioritised model backlog with problem statements, baselines and clear business owners.
• Maintain delivery pace while balancing technical debt, business priorities, and innovation.
• Implement robust value measurement of key business outcomes to guide product strategy and investment decisions.
• Oversee version control, CI/CD integration, and automated model lifecycle management.
• Promote a data-driven approach to product development, operational decisions, and customer experience improvements.
• Continuously improve tools, processes, and ways of working with code review standards, experiment tracking, model cards/docs, and reproducible pipelines for the data team and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Work with Product, Risk, Engineering, Operations, and commercial stakeholders to define high-impact modelling priorities, and partner with engineering to deliver and operate production-grade ML systems across model serving, feature pipelines, monitoring, drift detection, experimentation, retraining, and A/B or champion-challenger tests.
• Drive improvements to our MLOps approaches to embed production SLOs/SLIs, monitoring and drift, retraining and roll back, and post-launch value verification.

What we're looking for.

• Manages through clear objectives and context rather than task-based instructions.
• Strong track record of delivering measurable value in previous roles.
• Significant experience as an individual contributor data scientist shipping models to production, writing high-quality code, and partnering with engineers on serving & monitoring.
• Able to hold technical conversations at parity with engineers and data scientists.
• Knowledgeable about AI/ML safety, bias detection, and privacy considerations (PII handling and compliance).
• Comfortable delivering small, testable increments to production fast, then iterating based on measured outcomes.
• Champions simplicity and high code quality.
• Strong knowledge of experimental design, A/B testing, and causal inference.
• Keeps technical skills sharp while leading a team.
• Skilled at “telescoping”, seeing the big picture, then diving into critical areas of focus.
• Quickly identifies the root cause when problem-solving.
• Thrives in a fast-changing, high-growth environment.
• Embed responsible AI practices through fairness monitoring, transparent model documentation, and alignment with FCA expectations for explainability and data usage.
• Shape and maintain the modelling roadmap, ensuring prioritisation aligns with product, risk, and commercial outcomes.

Technical Skills.

• Proven strong MLOps practice, including CI/CD, cloud-native model training and deployment, model serving, and effective data lifecycle management.
• Expert proficiency in Python, SQL, and core ML libraries (e.g., Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-Learn, XGBoost).
• Strong experience working with cloud-based ML platforms (AWS preferred, e.g., SageMaker).
• Familiarity with model management and deployment tooling such as Git, MLflow, or CI/CD frameworks.

Ways of Working.

• Clear and concise communicator, able to translate technical concepts for senior leadership and non-technical audiences.
• Outcome-oriented, comfortable working in a fast-paced and evolving fintech environment.
• Passionate about scalable solutions, high-quality modelling, and responsible AI principles.
• Leads through empowerment and clarity, while setting a high bar for technical and delivery excellence.

Bonus skills.

• Experience with modern data stack tools (DBT, Snowflake, Looker).
• Exposure to deep learning, LLMs, or advanced ML techniques relevant to fintech.
• Experience developing near-real-time scoring pipelines or streaming-based ML systems.
• Interest in emerging technologies (LLMs, reinforcement learning, real-time ML, vector search, etc.) and their application in fintech.

To apply for this role, please submit your CV along with a cover letter.

We acknowledge receipt of your resume for a position at Zilch and we appreciate your interest in joining our business.

We will screen all applicants and select candidates whose qualifications meet our requirements. We will carefully consider your application during the initial screening and will contact you if you are selected to continue to the next stage of the recruitment process. We wish you every success.

Zilch Technology is an equal opportunities employer and we encourage all applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief.

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