Data Scientist

Methodfi; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - GBP 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A financial technology company in London is seeking a Data Scientist specializing in supervised machine learning to enhance their lending product strategy. In this hybrid role, you will analyze data to improve user conversion, design experiments to evaluate strategies, and present findings to impact company decisions. The ideal candidate possesses a strong background in probability and statistics, proficiency in data manipulation tools, and the ability to communicate complex data insights effectively.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Medical insurance including discounted gym membership

Private GP service

25 days’ holiday plus birthday off

Paid sabbatical after four years

Counselling and therapy sessions

Pension contributions

Employee equity incentive scheme

Generous parental leave

Electric car and cycle to work schemes

Company retreats annually

Qualifications

• Expertise in probability and statistics, gained through work in a quantitative field.
• Ability to translate data into actionable insights.
• Proficiency with data manipulation and modelling tools.
• Experience with scientific computing tools.
• Ability to work autonomously.

Responsibilities

• Analyze data to figure out optimal pricing and terms.
• Design experiments for performance comparison.
• Share findings to influence company strategy.
• Own monitoring and data pipelines for user journeys.
• Promote analytical rigour in experimental designs.

Skills

Probability and statistics expertise

Data manipulation and modelling

Autonomous work management

Clear communication skills

Education

Degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or similar

Tools

pandas

statsmodels

R

NumPy

SciPy

Job description

Overview

Hybrid in London, United Kingdom

The company

Small businesses move fast. Opportunities often don’t wait, and cash flow pressures can appear overnight. To keep going, and growing, SMEs need finance that’s as flexible and responsive as they are.

That's why we built iwoca. Our smart technology, data science and five-star customer service ensures business owners can act with the speed, confidence and control they need, exactly when it's needed.

We’ve already cleared the way for 100,000 businesses with more than £4 billion in funding. Our passionate team is driven to help even more SMEs succeed, through access to better finance and other services that make running a business easier. Our ultimate mission is to support one million SMEs in their defining moments, creating lasting impact for the communities and economies they drive.

The team

The Repeats team is responsible for the lending product strategy and digital user experience of recurring customers. They are responsible for all the product decisions that occur after a customer has taken their first funding. This includes the user journey eligibility and documents requirements and offer terms (such as offered amount or pricing), among other things.

The role

iwoca\'s Data Scientists specialise in supervised machine learning, statistical inference and exploratory data analysis, focusing on tabular and time-series data. Their work emphasises quantitative predictions through the analysis of conditional probabilities and expectations, using medium-sized datasets.

Your primary focus will be to figure out the best document requirements and offer terms (pricing, amount, duration, additional product features, etc.) to maximise user conversion and value to iwoca. You will look at observational data, identify hypotheses for unknown relationships, figure out their commercial relevance, and design and implement tests to prove or disprove your theory.

Strategy and innovation

• Work closely with the Repeats team lead and tech leads to identify and quantify opportunities within the customer journey, based on past data or modelled assumptions.

• Design experiments to compare the performance of different strategies and evaluate them rigorously to make unbiased decisions.

• Share your findings and modelling with the wider business to impact strategy. iwoca lives and breathes data as a company, so data scientists play an important role in decision-making.

Ownership and influence

• Own some of our monitoring and data pipelines, covering all aspects of existing customers\' user journey, and getting the data we need to make informed decisions.

• Lead the move away from rule-based policies towards machine learning approaches to improve predictive accuracy and optimise decision-making.

• Promote analytical rigour within the team, ensuring that our experimental designs are correctly defined and that we evaluate tests without bias.

Development opportunities

• Join our community of analysts/data scientists/statisticians to ensure alignment in methodology across iwoca. You’ll be part of a peer group with whom you can discuss best practices or the latest advances so that you share and deepen your technical expertise

• Build expertise across the full range of the Repeats funnel, from the user journey to the lending strategy, learning to understand how customers evolve in our complex environment

The requirements

Essential:

• Expertise in probability and statistics, gained through work in a quantitative field such as Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or similar

• Ability to understand business context and translate data into actionable insights that guide decisions

• Proficiency with data manipulation and modelling tools such as pandas, statsmodels, or R

• Experience with scientific computing tools such as NumPy or SciPy

• Ability to work autonomously and manage analytical work from framing the question through to making a recommendation

• Ability to communicate clearly in writing and speech, adapting technical detail to different audiences

Bonus:

• Understanding of Bayesian statistics, including interest in or experience with hierarchical models

• Experience building or adapting statistical or machine-learning models, with an interest in understanding the underlying methods

• Familiarity with stochastic modelling concepts as they apply to inference, time series, or uncertainty

• Understanding of financial concepts such as pricing or loss rates

The salary

We expect to pay from £60,000 - £80,000 for this role. But, we’re open-minded, so definitely include your salary goals with your application. We routinely benchmark salaries against market rates, and run quarterly performance and salary reviews.

The culture

At iwoca, we prioritise a culture of learning, growth, and support, and invest in the professional development of our team members. We value thought and skill diversity, and encourage you to explore new areas of interest to help us innovate and improve our products and services.

The offices

We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a great place to work:

• Offices in London, Leeds, Berlin, and Frankfurt with plenty of drinks and snacks.

• Events and community-led groups, including running groups, padel, and monthly ping-pong and pool competitions.

The benefits

• Flexible working hours.

• Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership.

• A private GP service (separate from Vitality) for you, your partner, and your dependents.

• 25 days’ holiday per year, an extra day off for your birthday, the option to buy or sell an additional five days of annual leave, and unlimited unpaid leave.

• A one-month, fully paid sabbatical after four years.

• Instant access to external counselling and therapy sessions for team members that need emotional or mental health support.

• 3% Pension contributions on total earnings.

• An employee equity incentive scheme.

• Generous parental leave and a nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money.

• Electric car scheme and cycle to work scheme.

• Two company retreats a year: we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain, and further afield.

Learning and development

• A learning and development budget for everyone.

• Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers.

• Access to learning platforms like Treehouse.