Head of Data Science

Who are we?

At 118 118 Money, we are dedicated to helping Britain achieve financial fitness. In 2023, we proudly relaunched the iconic 118 118 twins, reaffirming our commitment to improving the financial health of individuals across the nation. Our loans and credit cards are designed specifically for those often overlooked by mainstream lenders, empowering over 800,000 customers on their journey to better financial well-being.

Our vision is to champion financial fitness throughout Britain by offering accessible products, valuable resources, and unwavering support. We are on a mission to provide fair and transparent credit solutions that promote financial well-being for all.

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With an impressive 4.8 Trustpilot rating, we take pride in being an approachable lender, ready to provide clear financial support. If you’re inspired by what you’ve read and want to make a real difference in people's lives, keep reading—your next opportunity to contribute to our mission could be just a few clicks away!

What you'll do

This is an exciting and challenging position for a highly motivated and energetic individual who is looking for the next step in their career. You must enjoy working in a very fast-paced, highly flexible, dynamic environment. The Head of Data Science will lead a team working and solving problems across many aspects of a set of consumer lending products.

Reporting to the Chief Analytics Officer and working closely with the senior leadership team, this is a role for a talented professional who has tremendous self-motivation and will drive the team to embed market leading techniques.

Based in London with hybrid working available, this role will focus on leading and developing a team of data scientists in the development, deployment and monitoring of best-in-class models and statistical algorithms across the business. You should be able to bring together an understanding of the business needs and a variety of modeling techniques to deliver strong sustainable growth, within risk appetite, while ensuring best outcomes for customers.

Key responsibilities and objectives:

• Lead and develop a team of Data Scientists that will embed market leading models and processes within the business to support sustainable growth with a great customer outcome.
• Lead a team and work on the creation and deployment of best in class segmented credit models that are appropriate for unsecured consumer lending products.
• Be a driving force in enhancing the data and analytics approach and capability of the business through identifying improvement opportunities and being prepared to test and learn quickly.
• Work closely with the wider Analytics team to drive improvement to the overall value of the portfolio by adapting data sources, modeling strategies, cut-offs and application processes.
• Interact with external parties such as credit reference agencies.
• Communicate analysis and recommendations to senior technical or non-technical audiences through both written and verbal communication.
• Ensure MI in place to monitor the adequacy of models already in place, alerting the management team of any model degradation and proposing remediation actions.
• Work closely with colleagues across the group to deliver projects and the change agenda.

Who you are

You will have a very strong background in Data Science, either with a lending institution or be an exceptional candidate outside of financial services, with a proven ability to lead and develop a team of Data Scientists to generate continuous business improvement.

What you'll need:

Skills and Experience:

• At least two years Data Science leadership experience.
• Degree or equivalent in technical numerical field (e.g. statistics, mathematics, physics, operational research, economics, or engineering).
• Aptitude to embrace AI and its potential for the business, helping to identify and deliver AI projects across the business.
• A passion for supporting, coaching and developing high performance teams.
• Hands-on, strong knowledge of data manipulation and modelling languages – SQL and Python preferable.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and ability to convey complex concepts to non-technical members of the team.
• The ability to work in an extremely fast paced start-up environment.
• Extremely self-motivated and ability to operate independently.

What's in it for you?

• A competitive salary.
• Flexible, hybrid working opportunities.
• Company bonus scheme - if the business does well, you should get rewarded for your hard work.
• 25 days' annual leave, (plus bank holidays) increasing to 27 after two years service and 30 after five.
• Company pension scheme – we provide an enhanced pension scheme with generous employer contributions to set you up for the future which includes life cover of 4x your base salary.
• Eye test – you can claim a freebie each year, or if your needs change.
• Employee Assistance Programme - we offer membership to a recognised scheme to support you and your wellbeing.
• A strong ethos of equality, diversity, and inclusion.
• Wide business exposure, in terms of business disciplines, projects and stakeholders.
• Direct contribution to business transformation and growth.
• Huge learning and career progression opportunities.
• Being valued as an individual from our team.
• Full training, support and mentoring to develop a successful career in financial services.

Like what you’ve heard? Great - apply now!

As a candidate, we know the interview process can be daunting and it’s important that you have a great experience with us. We will do all we can to make sure you are fully informed and excited by our story so we get to see the best from you. If you need any adjustments made to help you with the interview process, just let us know and we’ll do our best to accommodate them.

Following your application, we will want to learn more about you, your motivations, experiences, and values. In turn, you get to learn about our business, our culture, the role and what we can offer you.

If you think you’d be great for the role, but don’t necessarily tick all the boxes, we’d still love to hear from you, so apply today and take the first step towards an exciting future!

Equal Opportunity Employer

At 118 118 Money we are passionate about equality, diversity, and inclusion. We are committed to being representative of different cultures, background, lifestyles, and groups, where everyone has an equal chance to succeed. It is our policy to treat everyone fairly and to ensure no one is disadvantaged or receives less favourable treatment. We recognise that everyone has different needs and while we can’t accommodate every flexible working request we are more than happy to have a conversation about it.

How we handle your data

118 118 Money requires your personal data to process your application for a position within our Company. If your application is successful through to telephone screening/interview, and you are not selected for a role, we may store your personal data for 12 months to enable our HR team to contact you should future roles be advertised.

Where you apply, but are not selected for telephone screening/interview, we will delete your personal data once the position is filled.

118 118 Money does not use automated decisioning or profiling when selecting candidates. For your rights under GDPR please see our Privacy policy.

Please be aware that should we pursue your application, all our Financial Services employees will be expected to complete background checks to assess suitability for employment, these include; a criminal record, identity, sanctions, adverse finance, fraud prevention and reference checks to comply with our regulatory requirements.