Staff Data Scientist, Credit Policy (Square Financial Services)

Role overview

Own credit policy design and governance for lending products within a regulated banking environment. The role combines evaluation of new data signals, underwriting strategy, experimentation, and portfolio oversight to expand access to credit while managing risk, profitability, and regulatory obligations.

Responsibilities

- Assess alternative data and develop policy strategies for new customer segments, balancing broader access with portfolio performance. - Define risk appetite, approval and credit limit standards, pricing approaches, and concentration limits. - Design and review champion/challenger tests, randomized holdouts, and staged rollouts, specifying hypotheses, metrics, sample requirements, fair lending considerations, and loss guardrails. - Maintain policy documentation, change records, and approval materials; prepare recurring portfolio and policy impact reporting for committees, leadership, and oversight functions. - Monitor portfolio performance and policy outcomes, and support updates or troubleshooting for strategies running in production. - Work with risk, compliance, and audit partners to ensure changes are properly governed and documented for examinations.

Requirements

- Related experience at the level of 8+ years with a bachelor’s degree, 6+ years with a master’s, or 3+ years with a PhD, or equivalent experience. - Technical education or equivalent expertise in a field such as computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics, or engineering; research experience or an advanced degree is preferred. - Experience governing credit policy at a bank, fintech, or consumer or small-business lender, including approvals, committee materials, audits, or regulatory examinations. - Practical experience designing or reviewing credit experiments, including sample sizing, statistical rigor, exposure limits, and decision-ready analysis. - Experience building portfolio monitoring and reporting, such as key indicators, early-warning measures, vintage analysis, and roll rates. - Ability to translate business goals into policy, communicate with technical and nontechnical stakeholders, and work within regulatory and operational constraints.

Benefits and work setup

Compensation varies by US work location. The stated annual ranges are $198,000–$297,000 in Zone A, $188,100–$282,100 in Zone B, $178,200–$267,400 in Zone C, and $168,300–$252,500 in Zone D. Listed benefits include remote work, medical insurance, flexible time off, retirement savings, and family planning support.