We’re here because we believe in small businesses. We believe they deserve better than waiting weeks for a loan. And we believe it’s our job to help them grow.
We started in 2012 with these principles, and we hold true to them today – now that we’re one of the fastest-growing fintechs in Europe. In the time between, we’ve built the best tech platform in lending, won several awards and opened up £3.5 billion in loans to over 90,000 businesses.
So what’s next? Our mission now is to help one million businesses who need us. To do this, we’ll need new products and partnerships. But most of all, we’ll need smart, hands-on people to join us on the journey and get us to our goal.
The role
As the Head of Data Science, you’ll be responsible for data science at iwoca, and developing some of our core Data Science iwocans into becoming a world-class team. At iwoca, we know it’s the team that makes businesses successful, and we will want you to come with ideas on how you get the best out of people you work with.
Data Science has been core to iwoca’s success since we began, we have an exceptional team of Data Scientists, and we want you to build on that, you should have a track record of attracting and hiring exceptional data scientists. This team has helped us create industry leading products, and we think this can be elevated with well thought through organisation and structure, so we can optimise the impact of the team.
Your role will involve crafting career development frameworks & pathways that people are genuinely eager to pursue. And, you’ll help individual contributors, new managers and team captains realise their full potential. We’re excited to see what you can achieve with our teams.
We have a Data Scientist community of 12, and many other colleagues in analytics roles. You’ll be responsible for 8 data scientists, a mix of managers and individual contributors, covering multiple areas, including new applications, converting new offers, repeat business, marketing, and all things that impact our Customer LifeTime Value (CLTV).
We will look to you to create and lead on iwoca’s data science team strategy and vision. You’ll work closely and partner with the Head of UK Lending (co-founder) to champion the value and importance of data science. You’ll endeavour for the highest performing teams to engage with, and realise our commercial goals.
Responsibilities:
- Develop data science teams, promoting innovation, collaboration, and growth
- Provide mentorship and guidance to team members
- Plan & run hiring for data scientists and managers, to meet capacity requirements
- Improve knowledge sharing processes across data science teams for continuous learning
- Nurture iwoca’s data science strategy and vision, prioritising impactful initiatives
- Create strategic roadmaps for ML-based forecasting algorithms.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate data science.
- Ensure development of robust code and data pipelines.
- Develop stakeholder relationships, communicate data insights to non-technical audiences
- Own and improve iwoca’s data science brand within the industry
Requirements
- Track record of managing high-performance data science teams
- A passion for mentoring, supporting, and growing data scientists.
- Significant data science experience, specifically from an environment where supervised machine learning on tabular data is used to predict behaviour.
- Expertise in quantitative machine learning and statistical inference for time series data
- Excellent understanding of probabilistic machine learning, quant modelling and statistical estimation
- Comfortable sometimes needing to be ‘hands-on’ as a data scientist.
- Exceptional stakeholder management, relationship and communication skills.
- Experienced working with developers, product managers and other business functions.
- Pragmatism and commercially astute
- Skilled at balancing short-term objectives with long term excellence.
- Organised, can get things done and delivery-focused.
- You care deeply about people, and their success
We expect to pay from £150,000 - £200,000 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 regularly remunerate staff for their increasing value to our business.
At iwoca, we prioritise a culture of learning, growth, and support, and invest in the professional development of our team members. You'll have access to ample opportunities for skill-building, mentorship, and career progression, and can decide your career path, focusing on frontend, branching into full-stack, or developing your skills in project and people leadership.
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.
Our friendly and inclusive environment, combined with our flexible work policies, ensures that you'll have the perfect balance between work and life, empowering you to thrive both personally and professionally.
Benefits
We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a brilliant place to work:
- Offices in London, Leeds, and Frankfurt
- Events and clubs, like bingo, comedy nights, yoga classes, football…
- Two company retreats a year, we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain and further afield
- Plenty of drinks and snacks in our offices
We offer a wide range of benefits:
- Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership
- 25 days’ holiday and an extra day off for your birthday
- Instant access to emotional and mental health support with our partner, Spill
- Generous maternity leave and shared parental leave
- A nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money
- Paid volunteering time to support your chosen charity
- Extra leave if you want to travel or study
- One-month fully paid sabbatical after 4 years
- Cycle-to-work scheme and electric car scheme
And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:
- An L&D budget for everyone, including a book budget
- Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers
- Access to learning platforms like Treehouse, Frontend-masters and Pluralsight
Have a look at our benefits & policies coda.