Senior Data Scientist, Tala
Causal Inference
Financial services in emerging markets
Job no longer available
Financial services in emerging markets
501-1000 employees
Job no longer available
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To build a modern credit infrastructure where consumer credit is more accessible.
Role
Who you are
- 4+ years of experience in a data science role or equivalent position
- 2+ years in a senior/lead position leading the execution of end-to-end machine learning solutions for business stakeholders
- Fluency with Python and packages related to machine learning
- Comfort with SQL
- Experience with the full modeling cycle, from scoping and development through deployment, after-sale, and monitoring. Demonstrated delivery of business value in previous roles
- Competency with statistics. Knowledge of experimental design and analysis. Previous experience with causal modeling techniques
- Strong collaboration and communication skills. Ability to tell stories through data and effective visualization
- Ability to thrive in, at times, ambiguous and complex environments
- Desire to champion simple, robust systems and to deploy and iterate as needed
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Senior Data Scientist – Causal Inference to tackle one of the world’s most pressing issues: financial inclusion
- In this role, you will lead high-impact data science initiatives aimed at uncovering cause-and-effect relationships
- Your efforts will drive strategic decision-making, optimize credit products, enhance customer experiences, and improve financial operations
- You will manage the entire modeling process, from defining problems and developing causal models to deployment, evaluation, and continuous monitoring
- Your expertise in causal inference, experimentation, and collaboration with stakeholders will be crucial in ensuring that data-driven insights lead to measurable business impact
- As a customer-focused leader, you will independently drive data science initiatives that align with Tala’s mission of unleashing the economic power of the global majority
- Your work will directly contribute to expanding financial access, improving credit outcomes, and shaping the future of inclusive finance
- Embed with business stakeholders to identify, test, and implement data science solutions with a particular focus on econometric models, experiments, and frameworks to assess challenging causal problems such as lifetime value or retention
- Develop a roadmap in collaboration with stakeholders to organize and prioritize initiatives
- Own full-cycle machine learning products from ideation and training to deployment into our production environment, including real-time inference and after-sale service
- Obsess over machine learning products, deploying and iterating rapidly when necessary
- Propose, design, and analyze large-scale online experiments and support business stakeholders with experimental design best practices
- Become a multiplier for the data science team by sharing work, providing mentorship to junior team members, providing technical feedback, and developing work into shared team tooling
- Be a thought partner for the business, leverage data insights and strong communication skills to influence company strategy
- Develop roadmaps in collaboration with stakeholders to organize and prioritize initiatives
Our take
Billions of people across the globe are unable to access traditional forms of credit, typically because of a lack of credit history or inconsistencies in their records. When making credit decisions, banks will rely on third party credit scores, whilst online lenders look at an applicant's financial history.
Tala is addressing this shut-out segment with an innovative model to assessing eligibility for a loan. Focusing on behavioral data tracked through its Android app, it creates a custom credit profile by analysing a customer's texts and calls logs, merchant transactions and overall app usage. Its machine learning algorithms then evaluate individual risk and provide instant loans.
More than 2 million people in emerging markets in countries such as India and Kenya have borrowed through Tala. The business has lent over $1 billion to consumers to date and is now scaling up its operations in India. It does face competition from the likes of Branch, but has nonetheless made promising strides thus far.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
19% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Oct 2021
$145m
SERIES E
Aug 2019
$110m
SERIES D
Total funding: $350.7m
Company benefits
- Opportunities to travel to the international offices (Mexico City, Nairobi, Manila and Bangalore)
- Free massages in the office
- Healthy snacks
- Every Tuesday an expert teaches a master class
- Sponsorship opportunities to attend professional conferences
- Ping pong
- Intramural leagues
- Go-karting
- Workout classes
- Work from home opportunities
- Health insurance
Company HQ
Santa Monica, CA
Leadership
Shivani Siroya
(Founder & CEO)Shivani has worked as an Analyst for Credit Suisse, UBS Financial Services, Citigroup, Janani and the United Nations Population Fund. They are also a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum.
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