Director of Data Science, KOHO Financial
CA$203-250k
+ Equity
Financial management application
Be an early applicant
Financial management application
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
CA$203-250k
+ Equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
To allow Canadians to be able to travel more, retire sooner, and live more balanced lives
Role
Who you are
- You are a Builder: You have deep technical roots in Data Engineering, Software Engineering, or Machine Learning. You are not just a people manager; you can debate architecture with Staff Engineers and understand the complexities of MLOps pipelines
- You are Autonomous: You don't need a roadmap handed to you. When faced with a complex issue where problems are not clearly defined, you can effectively structure a solution and assemble the right team to deliver it
- You are a Leader of Leaders: You have experience managing managers and senior ICs. You know how to guide a Staff Engineer’s career track differently than a Development Manager’s
- You Understand the Distinction: You understand that this is not a Head of Data Analytics role. You are excited about building the engine, not just reading the dashboard
- Proven experience leading large-scale data or engineering organizations (managing managers)
- Deep technical expertise in Python, MLOps frameworks, and Cloud Data Architecture (AWS/GCP)
- Experience deploying Generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) in a production environment
- Strong background in Data Engineering fundamentals (pipelines, warehouses, real-time streaming)
- Experience with "Type 1" strategic decision-making regarding technology choices and organizational structure
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Director of Data Science to lead our end-to-end data technology organization. This is a pure technology leadership role—you will not be responsible for business analytics or analytics engineering. Instead, you will own the systems, pipelines, and models that power our product and platform
- Reporting to the VP of Technology, you will lead a diverse team of Managers, Staff Developers, Senior Developers, and Data Scientists across four critical pillars: Data Engineering, Generative AI, Data Science, and MLOps
- As a Director at KOHO, you are a senior leader expected to operate fully autonomously. You thrive in environments where instructions may be as vague as "Figure out our GenAI strategy" or "Scale our real-time fraud models," and you have the judgment to translate those one-liners into functional plans, architectural decisions, and high-performance teams
- You will direct the activities of multiple integrated technical departments, managing through lower management (Senior Development Managers, or Development Managers) as well as directly guiding high-level individual contributors (Staff Developers)
- Team Composition: You will manage a variety of levels including Managers, Staff Developers, Senior Developers, and Developers
- Scale: You will oversee a significant portion of our tech organization (typically 20-50 people total), creating an environment where engineers can do their best work
- Strategic Impact: You will contribute to the development of the broader Technology department strategy. Many of your choices will be "Type 1" decisions—irreversible or nearly irreversible architectural and organizational choices that will shape KOHO for years
- 1. Masters Technology (Tech Strategy)
- Vision: Drive the long-term technical strategy for Data Engineering, GenAI, and MLOps. You bring knowledge from outside KOHO to build the best systems inside KOHO
- Innovation: Lead the adoption of Generative AI and advanced ML techniques, ensuring we are not just following trends but solving real user problems with cutting-edge tech
- Stack Ownership: Own the vision for our data tech stack—deciding what pieces we should change, depreciate, or double down on
- 2. Leads Systems (Architecture & Reliability)
- Operational Excellence: You understand the scaling limits of your services. You ensure regular load tests and operational readiness reviews are conducted so we know proactively when things are going to break
- Architecture: Evolve system architecture to support future requirements (e.g., real-time inference, massive data ingestion) and define related SLAs
- End-to-End Ownership: You are responsible for the entire lifecycle of data production—from ingestion (Data Engineering) to model development (Data Science) to deployment and monitoring (MLOps)
- 3. Leads a Domain (People & Culture)
- Manager of Managers: You will grow effective leaders within your organization, delegating leadership responsibilities to amplify impact
- Calibration & Performance: Own the calibration and performance review process for your department. You ensure high performance is recognized and low performance is managed
- Hiring: Drive department-level hiring initiatives, including tech contractor management and defining the interview process for data roles
- Culture: Act as a leader in the company and a link between the CTO/VP and development teams. You reinforce the culture of the tech department and empower people to drive engagement
- 4. Defines Process (Agility & Discipline)
- Process Maturity: Define the right processes for each team’s maturity level, balancing agility with the discipline required for managing financial data and production ML systems
- Stakeholder Management: You interact with senior management and executives, often negotiating matters of significance. You translate vague business requirements into clear technical deliverables for your teams
- 5. Influences Community
- Internal: Author posts on our tech blog and encourage your team to do so
- External: Participate in wider community events, speaking at conferences and meetups to elevate KOHO’s engineering brand
- Open Source: Encourage contributions to the open-source community, either by contributing back to projects we use or open-sourcing our own tools
Our take
In the wake of the gradual shift from physical to virtual interactions, the global internet-only banking industry has also seen tremendous growth in recent years. KOHO financial is part of this growing trend, they are a financial solution and payment platform built to help Canadians with managing their finances.
Apart from typical savings and budgeting common with money-management apps, KOHO customers enjoy a suite of financial services that help to build better credit, spending habits and insurance. As part of this, its product appeals especially to the majority of the paycheck-to-paycheck demographic.
KOHO's impressive growth and suite of products also appeal to investors who have backed it with one of the highest levels of funding in the Canadian fintech sector. However, this hasn't completely insulated it from the turbulence in the global economy, which led to KOHO restructuring in early 2023. With 2024 debt funding now secured, it is now focused on growth, aiming to further extend its lead in the Canadian market and achieve a Schedule 1 bank licence.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-16% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Oct 2024
$28.7m
LATE VC
Dec 2023
$61.6m
SERIES D
Total funding: $303.4m
Company benefits
- Stock options
- Semi-annual merit increases
- Holiday bonus
- Work from anywhere
- Generous PTO
- Health & Lifestyle spending accounts
- $1000 remote office setup budget
- $5000 referral bonus
- Free KOHO Premium account
- Icon Potential Alt Text
- In-house coaching program
- $2000 annual training allowance
- Approachable leadership
- Bias towards action
Company HQ
Liberty Village, Toronto, ON
Leadership
Daniel Eberhard
(CEO)Previously a co-founder and Vice President at Kineticor Renewables before their acquisition.
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