Director, Data Science - Payment Performance

About the role

Checkout.com is seeking a Data Science leader to unite the Fraud and Acceptance teams under a single strategy. This role involves leading a distributed group of data scientists to improve payment performance through machine learning, balancing strategic leadership with hands-on technical contribution. The successful candidate will own the end-to-end model lifecycle and partner with product and engineering teams to drive measurable business impact at scale.

Responsibilities

• Create a unified Data Science strategy across fraud and payment optimization.
• Own the end-to-end model lifecycle from experimentation to production performance.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to prioritize roadmaps and define technical standards.
• Lead, coach, and develop a distributed team of data scientists.
• Act as a technical sounding board for senior scientists and lead design reviews.
• Identify new scientific methods to create competitive advantages.

Required skills

• Machine learning
• Experimentation
• Model evaluation
• Production ML systems
• Team leadership
• Product strategy

Nice to have

• Payment fraud
• Authorization optimization
• Anomaly detection
• Graph methods
• Reinforcement learning
• Causal inference

About the Company

Checkout.com is a global fintech company powering digital payments for major brands like eBay, Spotify, and Uber. With 20 offices across six continents and headquarters in London, the company focuses on enabling effortless digital experiences at scale.