Head of Data Science - Leading FinTech Company

About the Role

We are seeking a Head of Data Science to join our team in a hybrid working environment, where you will spend 2 to 3 days a week in the London office. This is a senior leadership opportunity that offers a competitive salary between £150,000 to £160,000 base. As the Head of Data Science, you will play a pivotal role in shaping and scaling a high-impact data science function at a profitable and fast-growing fintech. You will have significant autonomy and the chance to influence how data science drives commercial decision-making across an established UK business.

What You'll Do

• Lead a multi-team data science function that underpins decisions across credit, product, operations, and commercial strategy.
• Maximize the value of data science across the organization while ensuring the function scales effectively.
• Set direction for the data science function and ensure alignment with core business and profitability metrics such as customer lifetime value.
• Hire, develop, and manage a large team of data scientists, including managers and senior individual contributors.
• Improve efficiency, standards, and ways of working across multiple data science sub-teams.
• Partner closely with senior stakeholders across product, engineering, operations, and commercial teams to embed insights in decision-making.
• Oversee the use of probabilistic and machine learning models in production environments and contribute to the long-term technical and modeling strategy.
• Help prioritize where data science delivers the greatest commercial impact.

Requirements

• Strong experience leading and scaling sizeable data science teams, including managing managers and individual contributors.
• A track record of driving measurable commercial impact through data science in a complex business environment.
• Experience operating in cross-functional settings and influencing senior stakeholders.
• Deep understanding of probabilistic modeling, statistics, and machine learning, ideally grounded in an academic background such as mathematics, statistics, physics, or a related field.
• The ability to balance rigor with pragmatism, ensuring models and analysis deliver real-world value.
• Experience building or operating data science functions where work is deployed into production.
• UK-based experience and the right to work in the UK, with sponsorship available if required.

Nice to Have

• Experience in the fintech sector.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure.
• Knowledge of data visualization tools.

What We Offer

• Competitive base salary of £150,000 to £160,000.
• Hybrid working model with 2 to 3 days per week in the London office.
• Significant autonomy and resources to shape the function and its future growth.
• The opportunity to lead a large, well-established data science team in a profitable and growing business.
• Clear scope to influence strategy, structure, and long-term direction of data science across the organization.