Director of Data Science, Mastercard
AdTech
$170-337k
Salary dependent on location
Global payments technology company
Be an early applicant
Global payments technology company
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$170-337k
Salary dependent on location
1001+ employees
Company mission
To connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible.
Role
Who you are
- This individual brings deep expertise in applied data science within the advertising ecosystem, a strong theoretical foundation in machine learning and statistical modeling, and a proven track record of leading cross-functional data science initiatives across engineering, product, business, and platform teams
- Deep expertise in applied data science and machine learning within advertising, ad tech, or media platforms
- A strong foundation in machine learning theory and statistical modeling, with the ability to apply theory pragmatically in production environments
- Proven leadership in driving complex, cross-functional initiatives that require alignment across engineering, product, and business stakeholders
- Strong judgment in balancing innovation with rigor, scalability, interpretability, and governance
- The ability to clearly communicate complex technical concepts and analytical insights to both technical and non-technical audiences
- A collaborative leadership style that emphasizes mentorship, shared ownership, and continuous improvement
- A strong sense of responsibility for data privacy, security, and ethical AI practices
- Experience in a senior or leadership roles, owning data science initiatives across multiple teams or domains
- Deep understanding of machine learning theory and practice, including:
- Supervised and unsupervised learning
- Probabilistic modeling and statistics
- Optimization techniques
- Model evaluation and bias considerations
- Proven experience building and deploying production-grade ML systems, not limited to research or offline modeling
- Strong background in advertising data science, including areas such as audience modeling, bidding and optimization, campaign measurement, attribution, or real-time decisioning
- Demonstrated success leading cross-functional projects requiring close collaboration with engineering, product, and business teams
- Fluency in SQL and one or more data science programming languages (e.g., Python, R), with the ability to work effectively alongside production engineers
- Experience working with large-scale data platforms, such as cloud data warehouses and distributed processing frameworks
What the job involves
- The Director of Data Science, Commerce Media provides technical and strategic leadership for all data science, machine learning, and advanced analytics initiatives supporting the Commerce Media platform
- This role owns the vision, execution, and evolution of data-driven decisioning across advertising products, including modeling, targeting, optimization, measurement, experimentation, and AI-powered insights
- The Director of Data Science translates complex business and marketplace problems into scalable, production-grade data science solutions that drive measurable impact
- Own the data science and machine learning strategy for Commerce Media, ensuring alignment with business objectives, platform capabilities, and long-term technical direction
- Lead the design, development, and deployment of machine learning models and decisioning systems supporting advertising use cases such as targeting, bidding, ranking, forecasting, and attribution
- Serve as the technical authority for data science methodologies, modeling approaches, experimentation frameworks, and evaluation metrics
- Drive cross-team data science initiatives by partnering closely with Engineering, Product, Architecture, and Business teams to deliver end-to-end solutions from problem definition through production
- Translate ambiguous business problems into well-scoped analytical and modeling approaches without requiring step-by-step direction
- Establish and maintain best practices for the full model lifecycle, including feature engineering, training, validation, deployment, monitoring, and retraining
- Lead and evolve experimentation and measurement frameworks (e.g., A/B testing, causal inference, incrementality) to quantify business impact
- Champion AI-first development practices, responsibly integrating modern AI and ML tooling into data science workflows while maintaining rigor, interpretability, and governance
- Mentor and develop senior data scientists, setting a high bar for technical quality, business impact, and collaboration
- Communicate complex analytical findings and model outcomes clearly to non-technical stakeholders, including executives, product leaders, and commercial partners
- Partner with platform engineering to build scalable, reliable production ML systems operating in high-throughput, real-time environments
- Ensure data privacy, security, and ethical AI principles are embedded across all data science solutions
Application process
- End Date: April 20, 2026
Our take
Mastercard is in the global payments business, and operates the world's fastest payments processing network. Its products and solutions have become central to everyday commerce across the world, in activities ranging from shopping and travelling to running businesses.
As the economy has become more and more digitised, Mastercard has been a leading player in helping businesses and individuals across the globe embrace card payments and digital banking. One of the world's largest companies, its revenue has seen consistent gain in the last 20 years.
The challenge for modern payments companies is that payments are always changing, as seen in the astronomical rise of contactless payments over the last decade. Mastercard's acquisition of blockchain systems, and an overall focus on leveraging its technology towards a digital economy, has placed the company in good stead to keep up to date with current trends, like cryptocurrency, in the digitised payments world.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
21% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company benefits
- Gym membership
- Share purchase options
- Extra holiday purchase optional
- Work from home opportunities
- Health insurance
Company HQ
Purchase, Harrison, NY
Leadership
Michael Miebach
(CEO)Has served in a variety of roles at the company, including President and CPO. Currently Board Member at IBM, Accion, the World Resources Institute, the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, and the Metropolitan Opera. They are also a Trustee of USCIB.
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