Lead Data Science

To ensure that Visas payment technology is truly available to everyone everywhere requires the success of our ecosystem of key banks merchants fintechs and Governments. The Global Data Science group supports these partners by using our extraordinarily rich data set that spans more than 3 billion cards globally and captures more than 100 billion transactions in a single year. Our focus lies on building creative solutions that have an immediate impact on the business of our highly analytical partners. To support our rapidly growing group we are looking for Data Scientists who are equally passionate about the opportunity to use Visas rich data to tackle meaningful business problems.

We are seeking an innovative and analytical thinker to support our Data Science team in CISSEE within Visa Consulting & Analytics. As a Director: Data Scientist you will be responsible for developing analytics and modelbased solutions for Visas issuer acquirer merchant fintech and Government clients. Your models will address challenges such as market opportunity sizing prospect targeting cross sell/upsell crosschannel marketing implementation risk fraud and more general portfolio optimization programs. You will be directly responsible for a limited number of adhoc reporting activities to accompany the main work of delivering descriptive predictive and prescriptive analytical projects applying appropriate analytic methodologies and techniques to solve clients business objectives. This roles primary function is to support external clients with some exposure to internal clients projects.

Global Data Science is the engine of analytics at Visa this is a highperforming team of Data Scientists Data Analysts Statisticians and Business Analysts from a variety of countries serving the Central Europe Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) geographies. The Director of Data Science is a lead Data Scientist role in the SubSaharan Africa (SSA) Visa Consulting & Analytics team.  As a Director you will be accountable for leading the design development and implementation of analyticsdriven strategies and solutions. In this role you will partner with Visa Consulting & Analytics Business Development Product Finance and Technology teams across the organization to implement solutions that drive business performance.

Principal Responsibilities
Provide leadership to identify strategic and tactical innovation opportunities around data and datarelated processes that will promote factbased decisioning processes
Help set strategic direction and roadmap for the Data Science group in CISSEE
Manage and execute projects and client engagement for the large projects in CISSEE
Provide leadership and mentoring to junior resources who are currently involved in the project
Provide leadership to identify strategic and tactical innovation opportunities around data and datarelated processes that will promote factbased decisioning processes
Help set strategic direction and the roadmap for the Data Science group in CISSEE
Work with regional and global Data Science teams to develop highquality analytic products and solutions that promote growth and business development for the region
Keep us at the forefront of technical advancement in Data Science by introducing cuttingedge tools and techniques for generating business insights
Develop nextgeneration analytic methods where existing techniques are not adequate to address business challenges
Review direct guide and inspire the analytical work of junior members in the team
Collaborate with technology partners to build an Analytics Technology Ecosystem that supports advanced decisioning
Develop share and build global best practices and knowledge management within the team
Socialize innovative new ideas and approaches that are scalable and have market demand Leadership Competencies
Demonstrates integrity maturity and a constructive approach to business challenges
Role model for the organization and implementing core Visa Values
Use sound insights and judgments to make informed decisions in line with business strategy and needs
Leadership skills include an ability to allocate tasks and resources across multiple lines of businesses and geographies. Leadership extends to ability to influence senior management within and outside Analytics groups
Ability to successfully persuade/influence internal stakeholders for building bestinclass solutions
 

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 23 set days a week (determined by leadership/site) with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Qualifications :

Basic Qualifications
10 or more years of work experience with a Bachelors Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications
12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelors Degree or 810 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters MBA JD MD) or 6 years of work experience with a PhD
Minimum of 8 years of analytics expertise in applying statistical solutions to business problems
Postgraduate degree (Masters or PhD) in a Quantitative field such as Statistics Mathematics Operational Research Computer Science Economics Engineering or equivalent

Professional Experience
Resultsoriented with strong problemsolving skills and demonstrated intellectual and analytical rigor
Good business acumen with a track record in solving business problems through datadriven quantitative methodologies. Experience in payment retail banking or retail merchant industries is preferred
Team oriented collaborative diplomatic and flexible style
Very detailed oriented is expected to ensure highest level of quality/rigor in reports and data analysis
 Proven skills in translating analytics output to actionable recommendations and delivery
Experience in presenting ideas and analysis to stakeholders whilst tailoring datadriven results to various audience levels
Exhibits intellectual curiosity and a desire for continuous learning
Experience working in one or more of the Payments markets around the globe preferred
Good understanding of the Payments and Banking Industry including aspects such as consumer credit consumer debit prepaid small business commercial cobranded and merchant
Good knowledge of data market intelligence business intelligence and AIdriven tools and technologies
Experience building and cultivating teams
Experience planning organizing and managing multiple large projects with diverse crossfunctional teams
Demonstrated ability to incorporate new techniques to solve business problems
Demonstrated resource planning and delivery skills
Expertise in distributed computing environments / big data platforms (Hadoop Elasticsearch etc.) as well as common database systems and value stores (SQL Hive HBase etc.)
Ability to write scratch MapReduce jobs and fluency with Spark frameworks
Familiarity with both common computing environments (e.g. Linux Shell Scripting) and commonlyused IDEs (Jupyter Notebooks)
Strong programming ability in different programming languages such as Python and SQL
Experience in drafting solution architecture frameworks that rely on APIs and microservices
Familiarity with common data modeling approaches and ability to work with various datatypes including JSON XML etc.
Ability to build data pipelines (e.g. ETL data preparation data aggregation and analysis) using tools such as NiFi Sqoop Ab Initio familiarity with data lineage processes and schema management tools such as Avro
Proficient in some or all of the following techniques: Linear & Logistic Regression Decision Trees Random Forests KNearest Neighbors Markov Chain Monte Carlo Gibbs Sampling Evolutionary Algorithms (e.g. Genetic Algorithms Genetic Programming) Support Vector Machines Neural Networks. Strong understanding in data architecture LLM and Gen AI concepts.
Expert knowledge of advanced data mining and statistical modeling techniques including Predictive modeling (e.g. binomial and multinomial regression ANOVA) Classification techniques (e.g. Clustering Principal Component Analysis factor analysis) Decision Tree techniques (e.g. CART CHAID)
Strong people/project management skills and experience

 

Additional Information :

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race color religion sex national origin sexual orientation gender identity disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Fulltime