Data Scientist - Acquisition Tech Team

Hybrid in London, United Kingdom

Imagine a world where every small business has the power to thrive. That's the world we're building at iwoca. Small businesses aren't just statistics – they're the heartbeat of our communities, the character of our high streets, and the engine of our economy. Since 2012, we've revolutionised how these businesses access finance, turning what was once a lengthy, frustrating process into something remarkable: funding that's fast, flexible, and actually works for modern businesses.

Our impact speaks for itself: we've provided billions in funding to more than 150,000 businesses across Europe, making us one of the continent's leading fintech innovators. But we're just getting started. Our mission? To empower one million businesses with the financial tools they deserve.

We combine cutting-edge technology and data science with genuine human understanding to make finance feel less like a barrier and more like a superpower. Whether a business is managing cash flow or seizing unexpected opportunities, we ensure they get the funds they need – often within minutes.

iwoca's Data Scientists specialise in supervised machine learning, statistical inference and exploratory data analysis, focusing on tabular and time series data. Our work emphasises quantitative predictions through the analysis of conditional probabilities and expectations, using medium-sized datasets.

The DE Acquisition Tech team sits at the heart of iwoca’s growth strategy. Its mission is to help Marketing and Sales reach and engage small businesses of every kind, showing how our finance can empower their ambitions. The team enables smarter, data-driven decision-making across paid and organic channels as well as direct sales. By embedding engineers, product managers, designers, and data scientists together, the team acts as a self-sufficient unit, shaping strategies that deliver measurable commercial impact.

As a Data Scientist in the DE Acquisition Tech team, you’ll shape how iwoca grows. You’ll design and evaluate experiments, build statistical and predictive models, and turn complex data into clear insights. You’ll own projects end to end while working closely with stakeholders to align your work with business goals. The models and insights you deliver will directly influence how we invest in sales and marketing, giving you visibility across the company and impact on customer acquisition.

You’ll shape projects that:

• Run controlled experiments across paid and organic channels, generating evidence on what drives conversions.
• Build and refine frameworks for Paid Search and Paid Social, enabling smarter bidding and more effective performance.
• Develop statistical attribution models to give clear insight into channel impact.
• Design predictive lead scoring models that help target valuable prospects more effectively.

Essential:

• Expertise in probability and statistics, gained through a quantitative field such as Mathematics, Physics, Statistics or similar.
• Ability to understand business context and translate data into actionable insights that guide decisions.
• Proficiency with data manipulation and modelling tools such as pandas, statsmodels or R.
• Experience with scientific computing tools such as NumPy, SciPy, R, Matlab, Mathematica or BLAS.
• Ability to work autonomously and manage projects end to end, from framing the question to delivering outcomes.
• Ability to communicate clearly in writing and speech, adapting technical detail to suit different audiences.

• Understanding of Bayesian statistics, including experience or interest in applying hierarchical Bayesian models.
• Experience building machine learning models from scratch, including creating custom optimisers.
• Knowledge of stochastic processes and related mathematical techniques.
• Experience working with Python, our primary programming language.
• Understanding of financial concepts such as deterministic cash flows.

We expect to pay from £60,000 - £90,000 for this role. But, we’re open-minded, so definitely include your salary goals with your application. We routinely benchmark salaries against market rates, and run quarterly performance and salary reviews.

At iwoca, we prioritise a culture of learning, growth, and support, and invest in the professional development of our team members. We value thought and skill diversity, and encourage you to explore new areas of interest to help us innovate and improve our products and services.

We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a great place to work:

• Offices in London, Leeds, Berlin, and Frankfurt with plenty of drinks and snacks
• Events and clubs, like bingo, comedy nights, football, etc.

• Flexible working hours
• Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership
• A private GP service (separate from Vitality) for you, your partner, and your dependents
• 25 days’ holiday per year, an extra day off for your birthday, the option to buy or sell an additional five days of annual leave, and unlimited unpaid leave
• A one-month, fully paid sabbatical after four years
• Instant access to external counselling and therapy sessions for team members that need emotional or mental health support
• 3% Pension contributions on total earnings
• An employee equity incentive scheme
• Generous parental leave and a nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money.
• Electric car scheme and cycle to work scheme
• Two company retreats a year: we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain, and further afield.

And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:

• A learning and development budget for everyone
• Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers
• Access to learning platforms like Treehouse

Useful links:

• iwoca benefits & policies
• Interview welcome pack