Lead Quantitative Scientist

Collaborative Solutions • Santa Ana, CA

12h • Hybrid

About The Position

Collectors is the leading creator of innovative technology that provides value-added services for collectors worldwide. We grade, authenticate, vault, and sell millions of record-setting collectibles, all while modernizing and digitalizing the process to further our mission of helping collectors pursue their passions. We’re always on the lookout for talented people to join our growing team. Our services span collectible trading cards, autographs, comic books, coins, video games, event tickets, and memorabilia. Our subsidiaries include PSA, PCGS, Beckett, SGC, and Card Ladder. Since our founding in 1986, we have graded and authenticated millions of items. We employ more than 3000 people across our headquarters in Santa Ana, California and offices in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico, Germany, and France.

We’re transforming the collecting experience with technology that brings authentication, grading, and trading into the modern era. Our products are equalizing the playing field by providing tools that make complex research analytics — including pricing, scarcity reports, and historic sales data — accessible to every collector, old or new. Grading is an opinion service — but behind that opinion sits decades of expertise and an increasingly powerful data and technology engine. We authenticate and grade collectibles across cards, coins, banknotes, video games, tickets, and more through our iconic brands — PSA, Beckett, SGC, PCGS and more — which serve as the industry’s trusted standard of quality and integrity. As the collectibles market evolves into a mature, data-driven asset class, we are investing heavily in the quantitative infrastructure that underpins our business — from market pricing and grading intelligence to lending and financial products built on top of our dataset. We’re looking for a Lead Quantitative Scientist to build and lead the quantitative modeling capability at the core of Collectors’ next phase of growth. You’ll own two critical domains: Lending & Underwriting — designing and scaling the ML and quantitative models that power automated underwriting for our lending business, where collectibles authenticated and graded by our brands serve as collateral — and Financial Forecasting — building predictive models that forecast collectible valuations, market dynamics, and pricing trends, strengthening the intelligence layer beneath PSA, Beckett, PCGS, and our broader ecosystem. You’ll operate as the founding, senior individual contributor going deep on modeling and infrastructure, with an opportunity to grow a high-caliber team over time. You will report into VP of Corporate Development and Strategy and work out of the office from our Santa Ana, CA or Jersey City, NJ location. Remote or hybrid candidates will also be considered, this will be discussed further during the recruiting process. We believe that there is significant value in in‑person collaboration. If you live within a 1‑hour commuting distance to one of our offices, you will be required to be onsite most of the time. This will be discussed further as part of the recruiting process.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in quantitative finance, data science, machine learning, or a related field, with meaningful depth in credit/lending, pricing, risk modeling, or asset valuation
• Strong ML fundamentals/Technical Rigor — you’ve built, validated, and deployed supervised/unsupervised models in production
• Financial modeling fluency — you’re comfortable with concepts like probability of default, loss given default, expected loss, time series forecasting, and asset pricing
• Production mindset — you care about model reliability, monitoring, drift detection, and working closely with engineering teams
• Entrepreneurial orientation — you thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and are comfortable owning a problem end-to-end with limited precedent
• Emerging leadership skills — you may not have managed a large team yet, but you’ve mentored others, led projects, and are excited to grow into a people-leadership role
• Strong communication skills — you can translate complex quantitative concepts for non-technical stakeholders and influence decisions with data
• Intellectual curiosity about alternative assets — you’re excited (not intimidated) by the prospect of modeling asset classes that don’t have decades of structured financial data behind them

Nice To Haves

• Experience in fintech, marketplace lending, or alternative/exotic asset valuation
• Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in a quantitative discipline — statistics, applied math, CS, physics, economics, operations research, or similar
• Experience building underwriting or credit decisioning systems from scratch
• Familiarity with alternative data sources and feature engineering for non-traditional collateral or thin-file credit assessment
• Personal interest in collectibles, trading cards, coins, or related hobbyist markets (not required, but it helps)

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and iterate on the ML and quantitative models that power Collectors’ automated underwriting engine for collectible-backed lending
• Develop collateral valuation models, credit risk frameworks, loss forecasting, and pricing models that operate reliably at scale
• Leverage Collectors’ proprietary grading, authentication, search and transaction data — one of the deepest datasets in the collectibles industry — as a core modeling advantage
• Partner with Engineering to deploy models into production systems with appropriate monitoring, explainability, and feedback loops
• Continuously improve model performance using new data sources, features, and methodologies
• Partner with other members of the Product & Technology team to validate valuation models through rigorous backtesting and experimentation
• Collaborate with domain experts to improve feature engineering to ensure our models reflect the market nuances that drive sale prices
• Build quantitative models that forecast market dynamics, asset valuations, and pricing trends across collectible categories (cards, coins, comics, banknotes, games, and beyond)
• Develop and refine intelligence that supports and enhances our grading and authentication businesses
• Generate insights that inform product, pricing, and go-to-market strategy across the Collectors portfolio
• Serve as the founding leader of the Quantitative Sciences function at Collectors
• Define the team’s roadmap, research agenda, and technical standards
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Finance, and Risk to translate business needs into modeling priorities

Benefits

• Health Insurance: All full-time employees are eligible to enroll in Medical, Dental, and Vision
• Additional Benefits: Full-time employees are eligible for fertility, commuter, and educational assistance benefits
• 401(K) Matching Plan: We are proud to offer a competitive 401k matching plan to our employees to support their future financial goals
• Vacation: All salaried employees are eligible for flexible time-off
• Holiday Pay: All regular, full-time employees are eligible for ten company paid holidays
• Employee Discounts: Employees receive discounts on select grading services for approved submissions
• Flexible Hours: Many of our teams offer flexible schedules with varying shifts and will work with you to accommodate your needs
• Fun Working Environment: Our team members are invited to participate in celebrations, holiday events, and team building activities

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior