Senior Data Scientist - Flex Pay
Upgrade, Inc.
$100,000 - $150,000 / year
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Description
About the Role:
We are seeking a highly analytical and results-driven Data Scientist to join our buy now pay later (BNPL) sector called Flex Pay. You will play a key role in building predictive risk models, optimizing offers and pricing, and extracting insights that drive product development, risk mitigation, and customer strategy. This role requires a strong foundation in statistics, machine learning, and programming.
While this position is ideally based in our San Francisco office on a hybrid basis, we are also open to considering remote candidates.
What You’ll Do:
- Build and maintain credit and fraud policy simulators used to ensure properly functioning systems and identify risk decisioning enhancements.
- Build and deploy statistical models and machine learning algorithms to solve business problems in areas like credit risk, fraud detection, pricing, customer segmentation, and marketing attribution.
- Validate models to identify factors that may affect model performance.
- Analyze large, structured and unstructured datasets using SQL, Python or similar tools.
- Stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies in data science and fintech, actively research new tools and techniques available for model development.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams including risk, marketing, product, and engineering to define data-driven strategies.
What We Look For:
- Advanced Degree (MS/PhD) in Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Finance, or a related quantitative discipline.
- 3-5+ years of hands-on experience in a data science or analytics role, preferably in financial services.
- Experience and/or strong interest in machine learning techniques (Random Forest, Gradient Boosted Trees, etc.) strongly preferred.
- Strong proficiency in Python (Pandas, Numpy, Scikit-learn) and SQL.
- Ability to write documentation and present analysis to people with different levels of expertise (e.g., technical staff, business leads, etc.).
- Proactive, driven, and ability to work in a fast paced environment.
Nice to Have:
- Experience with data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI).
- Experience with AI tools such as Claude
- Experience with data technologies like PySpark.
- Understanding of financial services concepts such as credit scoring, portfolio risk, or customer lifetime value.
What We Offer You:
- Competitive salary and stock option plan
- Paid coverage of medical, dental and vision insurance
- Competitive 401(k) and RRSP program
- Flexible PTO
- Opportunities for professional growth and development
- Paid parental leave
- Health & wellness initiatives
The compensation range of this position in San Francisco, CA is USD $100,000-$150,000 annually plus equity and benefits. Within this range, an individual's base pay will be dependent on a variety of factors, including without limitation, job-related knowledge, skills, education, and experience.
Benefits
- Competitive salary and stock option plan
- Paid coverage of medical, dental and vision insurance
- Competitive 401(k) and RRSP program
- Flexible PTO
- Opportunities for professional growth and development
- Paid parental leave
- Health & wellness initiatives
About this role
Upgrade's Flex Pay division is building out its data science capability to drive decision-making across credit risk, fraud, and pricing in the buy now pay later space. As a Data Scientist here, you'd own the full lifecycle of predictive models—from development through deployment—while also building and maintaining the simulators that test policy changes before they go live. The work spans multiple domains: credit risk assessment, fraud detection, customer segmentation, and marketing attribution, so you'd need comfort moving between different problem types and datasets.
The role expects strong technical fundamentals in Python, SQL, and machine learning algorithms, backed by an advanced degree in a quantitative field. Two years of hands-on data science or analytics experience is the baseline, with financial services background a meaningful plus. You'll present findings to both technical teams and business stakeholders, so communication across audiences matters as much as modeling skill. The position is hybrid, anchored to San Francisco with in-office time on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
This is a good fit if you're early in your data science career, have finance or fintech interest, and want exposure to real-world risk problems at scale. The salary range is $100,000–$120,000 plus equity, with standard benefits including medical/dental/vision coverage, 401(k) matching, flexible PTO, and parental leave.
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Pay for this role
$100,000 to $150,000 per year
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