Lead Data Scientist

Forward Financing•Boston, MA

1d•$174,000 - $220,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Forward Financing is seeking a Lead Data Scientist to drive end-to-end data science initiatives, transforming complex data into strategic decisions and automated solutions across the organization. This role operates at the intersection of high-level technical execution and cross-functional business partnership, building and scaling advanced analytical solutions that deliver measurable impact across all business domains at Forward Financing.

Requirements

8+ years of hands-on model development and deployment experience using advanced statistical and machine learning techniques such as generalized linear models, gradient boosting and deep learning
Deep experience in building and deploying credit risk models, especially underwriting models, in the fintech, lending or financial services industry is highly preferred.
Experience with real-time models, decisioning engines, and production-grade machine learning pipelines is preferred.
Expert in Python, SQL and Git
Experience with workflow orchestration tools, such as Metaflow is preferred
Experience deploying and managing models within a cloud platform (AWS, Sagemaker)
Strong foundation in statistics and machine learning, and knowledge of experimental design
Excellent project management and communication skills
Strong critical thinking and problem-solving ability
Bachelor's degree in Financial/Apfplied Math, Operations Research, Economics, and/or Statistics. Masters/PhD is a plus.

Nice To Haves

cloud data warehouses (e.g. Snowflake, Databricks)
Arize
Metaflow
Sagemaker
decision engines (e.g. Taktile)
feature stores (e.g. Tecton)

Responsibilities

Design, develop and deploy advanced statistical or machine learning models for credit risk, pricing, collections, fraud, and other high-impact business use cases that drive better data-driven decisions
Lead end-to-end delivery of data science initiatives from problem framing and model design through deployment, monitoring and ongoing maintenance
Partner with cross-functional teams including Portfolio Strategy, Engineering, Product, Underwriting, Sales and Collections to integrate models into our applications, and proactively identify and solve problems in critical business areas
Define and set standards for model development, code quality, and documentation; guide technical design decisions across the team
Act as a technical mentor to team members, fostering a culture of continuous learning and rigorous analytical standards
Communicate complex technical concepts and business implications to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Build and maintain production machine learning pipelines and monitoring systems to ensure models are reliable, scalable and continuously improving