Lead Data Scientist

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential. In Mastercard’s Financial Crime Solutions team, we build and deliver products and services powered by payments data to find and stop financial crime. We are an award-winning team combining data science with deep knowledge of payments data to aid financial institutions in their fight against money laundering and fraud.

As a Data Scientist, you will join one of the first teams in the world looking at payments data in the UK and across the world. You will be product-focused, collaborating with engineering, operations data scientists, and the wider sales, consulting, and product teams. You will help build systems that expose money laundering and detect fraud, and work with clients to understand underlying behaviours used by criminals.

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• Perform proof-of-concept projects, engage in product design and build prototypes.
  
• Use the full range of data science techniques to develop new and novel algorithms to aid existing and new financial crime products.
  
• Perform novel research to help us and our clients understand different criminal behaviours in payments data.
  
• Turn derived insights into new products and services offered to external clients.
  
• Learn new technologies as required and engage with legacy and future technology stacks, in the UK and internationally.
  
• Write white papers, patents, and client-facing data visualisations.
  
• Consider privacy, security, regulation, performance of code, and accuracy of models in your work.
  

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• Every person working for, or on behalf of Mastercard is responsible for information security.
  
• Abide by Mastercard's security policies and practices; ensure confidentiality and integrity of information accessed.
  
• Report suspected information security violations or breaches.
  
• Complete periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard's guidelines.
  

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• Core skills: You can write Python to a high standard and are familiar with standard data science libraries (pandas, scikit-learn, networkx).
  
• You are capable of developing new algorithms in novel situations and can demonstrate previous work.
  
• You understand the data we work with and have an interest in modelling the behaviours it exposes.
  
• You can communicate with non-technical colleagues about technical matters and consider others' perspectives.
  
• You are excited to explore new programming languages, technologies, and techniques and have a can-do attitude.
  
• You are open to peer review and constructive criticism.
  
• You are comfortable working in a setting that often breaks new ground and are keen to explore new technologies and techniques.
  
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  • Desirable experience:
    
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    • Practical experience with streaming technologies and platforms (e.g., Kafka), online algorithms (e.g., stochastic gradient descent), and fixed-memory data structures (e.g., Bloom filters).
      
    • Experience with next-generation machine learning techniques and tools, including Deep Neural Networks and TensorFlow.
      
    • Exposure to Network Theory, especially social network analysis and graph diffusion analysis.
      
    • Ability to build custom data visualisations, prototype browser-based UX/UI, and server-side microservices to support them.
      
    
    
    
  
  
  

Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Our decency quotient (DQ) drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.