Data Scientist Manager

Perpay - Career's Page•Philadelphia, PA

8d•Onsite

About The Position

Perpay is a certified B Corp and Philadelphia’s most impactful growth-stage startup, driven by a mission to significantly improve the financial stability of everyday Americans. With a strong product-market fit and a profitable operating model, Perpay is the premier financial partner for consumers with subprime credit. The company is scaling operations, building new offerings, and deepening its impact, seeking teammates eager to join this journey. Perpay's products include the Perpay Marketplace (interest-free payments and e-commerce), Perpay+ (credit monitoring and building), and a Perpay Credit Card. The team thrives on in-person collaboration in a unique center-city Philadelphia office, offering a comfortable environment that fosters rapid product development, strong relationships, and career growth. While primarily office-based, sensible flexibility is offered for personal needs, with coordinated remote weeks around major holidays. Perpay offers a meaningful mission, collaboration, equity, and generous perks. The Data Science team at Perpay is responsible for modeling work that drives key decisions, including credit decisioning, loss forecasting, marketing-mix attribution, product experimentation, and real-time ML systems. Current focus areas include the data science aspects of a credit decisioning service redesign, expanding card portfolio modeling, increasing the use of LLMs, and refining the feedback loops between credit-reporting strategy and data. Data Science collaborates closely with Engineering, Risk, Marketing, Merchandising, and Finance, as well as Data Engineering and Strategic Analytics. The team culture emphasizes end-to-end ownership, with individuals responsible for designing, scoping, shipping, and monitoring their models. Rigor is applied where necessary, avoiding over-engineering. The tech stack includes Python (scikit-learn, pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, statsmodels, PyMC), AWS (ECS, Airflow, Terraform), Redshift, and modern LLM tooling. This role is a blend of individual contribution and management, requiring active participation in coding and model building.

Requirements

At least three years directly managing data scientists.
Substantial individual contributor (IC) experience that has been kept current.
Ability to defend code and design decisions on modeling systems recently built or led.
Experience handling disagreements with stakeholders regarding scope, methodology, or interpretation of results.
Proficiency in Python and the standard data science toolset (scikit-learn, pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, statsmodels).
Experience with Bayesian tooling (PyMC) is a plus.
Familiarity with deploying and orchestrating models on AWS using ECS, Airflow, and Terraform.
Experience with Redshift as an underlying warehouse.
Experience using modern LLM tooling.
Comfort being challenged on work and challenging back.
Passion for a meaningful mission, collaboration, and equity.

Nice To Haves

Experience with PyMC.
Experience with LLM tooling.

Responsibilities

Lead a Data Science team, spanning early-career to senior individual contributors.
Own hiring, performance management, and technical strategy for the Data Science function.
Partner with the Head of Data, and leads of Data Engineering and Strategic Analytics on broader organizational direction.
Write code, build models, and ship production work alongside the team.
Design models, scope them with stakeholders, ship them to production, and monitor their performance.
Set the technical direction for the data science team's contribution to major initiatives, such as the risk decisioning service redesign.
Ship meaningful pieces of modeling work end-to-end.
Implement process or workflow changes on the team.
Complete full performance check-in cycles with direct reports.
Materially expand the team's reach through hiring, scope expansion, and deepening existing work.
Become a trusted technical voice on data science across the broader leadership team.
Contribute significantly to production modeling work.
Develop individual contributors to become more senior.
Hand off projects to ICs who have grown to lead them independently.

Benefits

Meaningful compensation and equity
Premium medical benefits (fully paid base plan, and very reasonable premium for the buy-up option)
4% employer 401k match
Unlimited PTO policy
Remote weeks around major holidays
Extra holiday on weekends like MDW and LDW
High quality catered lunch by local chefs, 4 days / week
Gym subsidy
Paid cell phone + plan
Student loan repayment program
Relocation assistance
Generous team member discounts