Inizio Partners · 15 hours ago
Staff Data Scientist - Credit Risk & Propensity Models
SD Metro Area
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level
$160K/yr - $180K/yr
4+ years expInizio Partners is a company focused on credit risk and propensity modeling, seeking a Staff Data Scientist to lead the development of statistical and machine-learning models for small-business lending portfolios. The role involves building and maintaining risk models, collaborating with various stakeholders, and ensuring strong model governance and performance monitoring.
Staffing & Recruiting
Hiring Manager
Chanchal Kokkuvayil
Responsibilities
Design, develop, and maintain Probability of Default (PD) and other core credit-risk models used in underwriting, portfolio management, and credit strategy
Build and enhance propensity, conversion, and price-sensitivity models to optimize funnel performance, approval rates, and expected profitability
Partner with Risk & Analytics leadership to translate risk appetite, growth objectives, and portfolio constraints into scalable modeling solutions
Develop segmentation frameworks and decision logic to support differentiated credit terms, limits, and pricing across customer cohorts
Lead model validation, performance monitoring, and stability analysis, including back-testing, drift detection, and recalibration
Conceptualize and execute on data science research roadmap that create new insights unique to client ecosystem and drive fundamental transformation of risk models. This transformation would be the key for client to increase its market share in specific segments against incumbents
Collaborate with Engineering and Data teams to productionize models, ensure reliable execution, and support ongoing model monitoring and governance
Support experimentation, A/B testing, and test-and-learn initiatives to measure model and policy impact across the customer funnel
Communicate model design, performance, and tradeoffs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders
Contribute to documentation, model governance artifacts, and regulatory or audit-ready materials as needed
Qualification
Required
7+ years of hands-on experience building underwriting, credit-risk, or loss-prediction models for small-business or commercial portfolios
Demonstrated experience developing PD, propensity, pricing, or funnel-optimization models used in live decisioning
Experience supporting model deployment, execution, and ongoing monitoring in a production environment; MLOps experience is strongly preferred
Statistical risk modeling
Loss forecasting and portfolio analytics
Limit assignment optimization
Pricing and interest rate statistical simulations
ML model deployment and governance
Experimentation and A/B testing
Strong SQL and Python proficiency; ability to work with large datasets and build reproducible analytical workflows
Excellent communication, presentation, and story-building skills in a consulting/client-facing setup
Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives end-to-end and coordinate with offshore delivery teams
Bachelors degree in a related quantitative field such as Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Finance, or Engineering required
Preferred
MLOps experience is strongly preferred
Masters degree in Data Science, Statistics, Economics, Finance, or a related quantitative discipline is a plus
Company
Inizio Partners
Inizio Partners is a full-service recruitment agency specializing in executive search, permanent placements, and contingency staffing.
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageLeadership Team
Chanchal Kokkuvayil
Founder & CEO
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