Lead/Senior Data Scientist (Credit Risk)

Lead/Senior Data Scientist (Credit Risk)

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About Cleo: At Cleo, we’re not just building another fintech app. We’re embarking on a mission to fundamentally change humanity’s relationship with money. Imagine a world where everyone, regardless of background or income, has access to a hyper‑intelligent financial advisor in their pocket. That’s the future we’re creating.

About the Company: Cleo is a rare success story—a profitable, fast‑growing unicorn with over $200 million in ARR and a 2× annual growth rate. This isn’t just a job; it’s a chance to join a team of brilliant, driven individuals passionate about making a real difference. We have an exceptionally high bar for talent, seeking individuals who are not only at the top of their field but also embody our culture of collaboration and positive impact.

If you’re driven by complex challenges, the chance to shape something transformative, and the potential to share in Cleo’s success as we scale, this might be your perfect fit.

The role

We’re looking for a Lead/Senior Data Scientist to measure, monitor, and improve the performance of Cleo’s credit products. This level 3 or 4 analytics role is hands‑on. You’ll analyse behaviour across millions of U.S. users using rich transactional and behavioural data that power Cleo’s AI money coach and credit products, spending the majority of your time in SQL and Python. You’ll be the analytics owner for EWA or a specific product, with direct line of sight to losses, revenue, and the product roadmap, and you’ll work closely with Risk Modellers, Product Managers, and Engineers to diagnose portfolio trends, build monitoring frameworks, and deliver insights that inform how Cleo manages and optimises risk.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Credit & Risk Performance Analytics
• Write complex SQL/python to pull cohort‑ and event‑level datasets from our warehouse and transform them into clear, decision‑ready analyses.
• Quantify the commercial impact of performance changes (losses, yield, approval rate).
• Design and analyse multivariate experiments on underwriting, pricing, or repayment flows, and translate results into actionable risk strategies.
• Analyse arrears, default, and yield trends across Cleo’s credit products.
• Identify emerging risks and shifts in eligibility or repayment behaviour using cohort and segmentation analysis.
• Build and maintain dashboards for portfolio health and performance tracking.
• Design early‑warning alerts for anomalies in arrears or model‑driven decisioning.
• Partner with the Risk Modelling team to turn model health metrics (AUC, PSI, calibration, feature drift) into clear recommendations for policy or product changes.
• Monitor model stability and support investigations into concept drift and feature degradation.
• Quantify the impact of model changes and assess whether observed shifts are model‑ or market‑driven.
• Conduct root‑cause analysis on performance deteriorations (e.g., arrears spikes, yield compression).
• Own investigations from question → analysis → recommendation, and present your work to Risk, Product, and Leadership.
• Use decomposition, SHAP analysis, and driver frameworks to explain variance in loss and yield.
• Support the design and measurement of A/B tests or pilot changes in credit decisioning or repayment operations.
• Partner with Finance and Commercial teams to support variance analysis and monthly forecast inputs.
• Model how shifts in repayment or eligibility rates flow through to portfolio loss and profitability.
• Work with Analytics Engineering to improve risk data pipelines and metric definitions.
• Build reusable analysis templates and frameworks for monitoring across multiple credit products.
• Communicate insights clearly to non‑technical stakeholders, transforming complex findings into actionable decisions.

About You

Experience & Skills

• 4+ years of analytics or data science experience in a risk‑focused role, ideally within fintech, lending, or payments.
• Excellent SQL skills.
• Fluency in Python (or R) for data analysis, modelling, and statistical testing.
• Experience conducting large‑scale A/B experiments and interpreting results to drive product and business decisions.
• Fluent in credit portfolio metrics (e.g. arrears buckets, roll rates, loss rate, yield/marginal loss) and how they tie to unit economics and P&L.
• Hands‑on experience working with predictive models (credit, fraud, marketing), including interpreting metrics like AUC/Gini, calibration, PSI/CSI, drift.
• Hands‑on experience with BI tools (Looker, Mode, Tableau) and data workflow tools (dbt, Airflow).
• Strong analytical rigor and the ability to translate findings into clear business recommendations.
• Track record of taking analyses all the way through to shipped changes and measurable impact.

Nice to Have

• Exposure to credit risk or payments decision‑making (eligibility, pricing, loss modelling, or fraud detection).
• Experience with model monitoring, feature engineering, or supporting ML deployment.
• Familiarity with U.S. and/or U.K. consumer credit or payments regulations.

What do you get for all your hard work?

• Competitive compensation package (base + equity) with bi‑annual reviews, aligned to quarterly OKR planning cycles.
• Work at one of the fastest‑growing tech startups backed by top VC firms (Balderton & EQT Ventures).
• Clear progression plan—you can grow, lead others, challenge the status quo and own your impact, with full support.
• Flexibility—our globally distributed team allows you to work where you best operate; we encourage occasional in‑office presence where possible.
• Generous leave: 25 days annual leave + public holidays (+ an additional day for each year you spend at Cleo, up to 30 days).
• Benefits: employer‑matched pension (6 % in the UK), private medical insurance (Vitality), dental cover, life assurance, enhanced parental leave, one‑month paid sabbatical after four years, regular socials and activities (online and in‑person), OpenAI subscription, online mental health support via Spill, workplace nursery scheme.

EEO Statement

We strongly encourage applications from people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, parents, carers, and people from lower socio‑economic backgrounds. If there’s anything we can do to accommodate your specific situation, please let us know.