Director, Consumer Portfolio Growth Data Science

PayPal•San Jose, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Company PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers. We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards. Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade. Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day. We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities. Job Summary: We are seeking a Director of Consumer Portfolio Growth DS to lead a team of highly skilled data scientists. This team serves as the connective tissue between Commercial, Marketing, Product, and Finance, powering PayPal’s consumer business with insights that shape strategy and execution. In this role, you will: Build deep expertise in the consumer funnel, uncovering and explaining the drivers of acquisition, engagement, and retention across products, segments, and markets. Translate complex data into powerful stories and actionable insights that influence senior leaders. Foster a culture of curiosity, innovation, and data-driven decision-making. This is a high-visibility position that requires both analytical depth and the ability to inspire confidence and action through storytelling.

Requirements

Data-driven mindset with degree in a quantitative discipline such as Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, Mathematics, or Economics
Fluent in SQL, Excel, and visualization tools such as Tableau or Looker; familiarity with a statistical programming language (e.g., R, Python) preferred
Ability to leverage LLMs and Agentic AI in Insights automation workflows.
Being able to build Machine Learning Models for causal inference and growth modeling in offline and production environment.
Ability to work proactively and independently in a fast-paced environment and juggle competing priorities
12+ years of work experience in similar roles including 6+ years of people management experience.
Intellectual curiosity and drive, decisiveness, and comfort with ambiguity and complexity.
Ability to work effectively with multiple stakeholders and cross-functionally.
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills to influence cross-functional teams
Master’s degree (or higher) in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related quantitative discipline.
7+ years of relevant industry experience (or 6+ years with a PhD).
Deep understanding of Transformer architectures and hands-on experience with fine-tuning LLMs for production use cases.
Strong proficiency in Python and ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX.
Demonstrated experience with Agentic frameworks such as A2A, MCP, LangGraph, or LangChain, and an understanding of Agent-Oriented Design patterns.
Experience building context-aware conversational systems, integrating multi-source data for reasoning and response generation.
Familiarity with evaluation methods for LLMs and agentic systems, including prompt testing, offline metrics, and human feedback loops.
Experience with MLOps and LLMOps workflows, including model deployment, monitoring, and iterative retraining at scale.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with a statistical programming language (e.g., R, Python) preferred

Responsibilities

Partner with Commercial, Product, Marketing, Finance, and cross-functional teams to inform, influence, support, and execute strategy and monetization decisions for the Consumer business.
Lead a team of talented data scientists responsible for monitoring PayPal customer funnel trend (activation, engagement, etc.), investigating and explaining drivers of change
Develop a deep understanding of PayPal’s overall business (e.g., products, geographies, business model, value prop)
Identify key business levers, establish cause & effect, perform analyses, and communicate key indings to various stakeholders to facilitate data-driven decision making
Discover new opportunities to grow and optimize the business through analytics, financial modeling, and business case development
Roll up your sleeves and work with large quantities of data using SQL and Excel, apply statistical programming languages like Python, and visualize content through executive-ready PowerPoint and/or other reporting tools
Understand what matters most and prioritize ruthlessly
Be comfortable with ambiguity and frequent context-switching in a fast-paced environment
Leverage AI Pipelines to Automate Insights at scale and bring deep analytics into consumer growth domain.
Fine-tune large language models (LLMs) for Venmo-specific use cases, ensuring robust alignment, safety, and personalization.
Implement and extend agentic frameworks such as A2A (Agent-to-Agent), MCP (Model Context Protocol), LangGraph, or similar, to enable complex, multi-agent interactions.
Perform advanced context and prompt engineering, optimizing model responses and orchestrating multi-turn, multi-source interactions.
Collaborate closely with product, design, and platform engineering teams to shape Venmo’s next-generation Agentic product capabilities and AI interface roadmap.
Experiment with reinforcement learning, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and online adaptation to improve agent behavior and response quality.
Develop scalable, production-ready LLM and agentic pipelines, including data preparation, model training, evaluation, and continuous improvement.
Communicate insights and technical trade-offs clearly across technical and business teams to guide decision-making and influence Venmo’s broader AI strategy.