Senior Data Scientist, Credit - Mission Lane

About Mission Lane

Mission Lane is dedicated to empowering millions of people on their journey to financial success by combining data, technology, and exceptional service. We attract top talent and leverage cutting-edge technology to help individuals achieve real financial progress.

Senior Data Scientist, Credit

We are seeking a Senior Data Scientist to develop and enhance the machine learning models that drive Mission Lane's credit decisions. Our work goes beyond traditional credit scores, focusing on understanding the unique financial stories of our applicants.

The Impact You'll Make:

• Build and refine models that accurately assess creditworthiness, ensuring fairness and enabling customer financial advancement.
• Tackle the complex challenge of predicting repayment for applicants with limited credit history by exploring alternative data sources and modeling techniques.
• Contribute to the growth and maturation of a dynamic fintech company.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and deploy supervised learning models for credit decisions, from initial experimentation to production.
• Collaborate with credit risk and portfolio teams to translate business needs into modeling problems and articulate trade-offs.
• Monitor production models, detect drift, and validate performance to ensure continued accuracy.
• Apply robust software engineering practices, including test-driven development, code reviews, and refactoring.
• Explore new data sources and modeling approaches using Mission Lane's Python data stack.

Core Tech Stack:

• Python and the Python data stack (numpy, polars, scikit-learn)
• LightGBM, DVC, Kubernetes, Airflow
• Google Cloud, Chalk (feature store)

What You'll Bring:

• A practical, curiosity-driven approach to problem-solving.
• Enthusiasm for learning the credit and lending domain, including regulatory considerations and long-horizon predictions.
• Comfort with the full model lifecycle, including data cleanup, monitoring, and validation.
• Ability to communicate complex modeling decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Degree in a quantitative field and 1+ year of relevant work experience.
• Experience creating, deploying, and managing supervised learning models in production.
• Proficiency in writing tested, reproducible code for data pipelines and model training using the Python data stack.
• Familiarity with command-line operations, shell scripting, databases, and cloud computing services.
• Ability to travel approximately 4+ times per year for in-person collaboration.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in consumer lending or fintech.
• Experience with data pipeline platforms like Airflow or Dagster.

Compensation & Benefits:

• Annual full-time starting base salary range: $120,000 - $134,000.
• Eligibility for annual incentive and equity programs.
• Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, 401(k) match, monthly wellness stipend, health/dental/vision insurance, disability coverage, paid parental leave, flexible spending accounts, life insurance.
• Remote-first work environment.

About Mission Lane:

Founded in 2018, Mission Lane is a purpose-driven fintech company addressing the financial needs of underserved populations. We offer credit cards with clear terms and a refined customer experience, partnering with sponsor banks to serve individuals seeking to improve their credit. Mission Lane has raised over $600 million in equity from leading investors.