Research Scientist, PhD New Grad

SentiLink

3d•$120,000 - $220,000•Remote

About The Position

SentiLink is seeking a Research Scientist, PhD New Grad to build core products, including models for fraud identification and advancements in financial risk. This role is ideal for new PhD graduates or early-career researchers passionate about applying machine learning to real-world fraud detection. You will gain hands-on experience across the entire ML lifecycle, from research and development to large-scale deployment, building and shipping machine learning models in a production environment. This position offers practical AI and ML exposure in an industry setting, going beyond theoretical research. Open roles exist within multiple teams: Emerging Products (0-to-1 development of new offerings), Application Fraud (analyzing consumer financial applications for fraud), and Identity (resolving identities across diverse data sources and generating risk models). You will be expected to be technically proficient and take ownership of your domain, often working on high-visibility projects requiring deep understanding, critical thinking, and strong technical skills. Collaboration with cross-functional teams is key for researching new fraud types, developing products, and providing analysis for sales and marketing. This is a full-stack data science role encompassing model development, analysis, and production code writing, with an emphasis on end-to-end ownership in a fast-paced environment where deep domain knowledge and unique insights provide a competitive edge.

Requirements

Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field or equivalent experience/research
Strong foundation in machine learning, statistics, or applied data science
Experience with Python and common data science tools through coursework, research, internships, or personal projects
Demonstrated ability to analyze complex problems and build data-driven solutions
Strong communication skills and ability to explain technical ideas clearly
Interest in learning deeply about fraud, identity, and financial risk systems
Ability to write clean, maintainable code
Strong attention to detail and curiosity about real-world data problems
Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States and must live in the United States
Thrive in a fast paced environment characterized by the need to solve extremely varied, high impact, open ended problems

Nice To Haves

Python 3, PostgreSQL, and AWS infrastructure (EC2, S3, RDS, Redshift, etc.)

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain SentiLink’s fraud detection models through the full model development lifespan: from data acquisition decisions through featurization, focusing labeling resources, model training, experimentation, productionalization, and monitoring.
Build foundational modeling to drive SentiLink’s expanding suite of Fraud and Financial Risk products.
Research new types of fraud and develop new SentiLink products around identity verification.
Achieve success by researching / developing through iteration, integration of new data sources and inventive feature engineering.
Write production-ready code that can be relied on for real-time decision making by our partners.
Design, perform, and present analyses that will inform data acquisition, product development, risk operations priorities, marketing, and sales efforts.
Work with engineering, risk operations, and data acquisitions to access necessary data, maintain data quality, and support data access.