Lead in Data Science, Managed Service at VCA

Company Description

Visa is a global leader in digital payments, enabling over 215 billion transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government bodies across over 200 countries and territories every year. Our mission is to connect the world via the most innovative, user-friendly, dependable and secure payment network, empowering individuals, businesses, and economies to flourish.

When you become part of Visa, you join a culture of purpose and inclusion, where your personal development is a priority, your uniqueness is valued, and your work is significant. We believe in an economy where everyone, everywhere is included uplifts everyone, everywhere. The work you do will directly affect billions of people worldwide, helping to provide financial access and facilitating the evolution of payment methods.

Join Visa: A Network Working for Everyone.

Job Description

Team Summary

Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) team offers analytics and consulting services to tackle client business problems by leveraging market and internal data. VCA Managed Services is a collection of service offerings collectively driving the future growth of the VCA organization, allowing our clients to implement recommendations derived from strategic advisory engagements. The team focuses on improving clients' business performance working closely with them including their data utilization. Alongside creating and automating clear and actionable predictive models, we assist clients in model execution and result evaluation.

The team interacts with stakeholders and team members across multiple functions, hence a strong intuition for developing analytic models to solve specific business issues is crucial. The role further involves innovating new analytics services as we expand.

What a Data Science Lead does at Visa:

• Lead, mentor and manage a team of data scientists, fostering a collaborative, inclusive environment that encourages innovation and continuous learning. Set clear team goals, oversee project execution, and manage team performance.
• Devise and implement strategic plans for the data science team, ensuring alignment with the company's objectives. Facilitate communication and collaboration between the data science team and other departments for effective execution of data-driven initiatives.
• Perform hands-on management and execution of multiple medium to large complex analytic projects.
• Establish best practices for change management, model automation, and production rollout.
• Be familiar with batch processing and process monitoring for model refreshment.
• Meet with key clients to explain model results, answer questions and propose further analysis.
• Work closely with key clients to analyze their data, extract insights, and create dashboards.
• Take the initiative in discussions with client’s data science, corporate planning, and marketing teams to identify opportunities.
• Actively seek opportunities to improve processes and technologies.
• Cooperate with the internal teams to fully comprehend business requirements and desired outcomes.
• Define detailed analytic scope and methodology, and create an analytic plan.
• Implement with appropriate statistical and machine learning techniques.
• Provide thought leadership in utilizing data to solve business problems and achieve innovative statistical solutions.
• Ensure project delivery falls within timeline and budget requirements.

Why this is important to Visa

VCA’s services allow our clients to enhance their business performance by leveraging Visa's extensive market insights and data. Moreover, the Managed Services team works closely with clients to utilize their data and improve their business using data science capabilities. Our role, especially in Japan, is essential in progressing the transition towards a more cashless payment landscape.

This is a hybrid role allowing a mix of remote and office working. Employees in hybrid roles are required to work from the office 2-3 preset days per week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guideline of spending 50% or more of the time in the office based on business needs.

Qualifications

What you will need:

• 12 years of analytical experience in applying statistical solutions to business problems.
• Graduate degree (Masters or Ph.D.) in computer science or a quantitative field such as physics, statistics or mathematics, or equivalent experience.
• Experience in leading and managing a data science team for 2 years or above, with strong abilities to inspire, mentor, and motivate team members while driving projects to successful completion. Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to facilitate cross-functional collaboration are essential.
• Proficiency in processing large datasets using Hive and related tools.
• Fluency in multiple technologies and languages (Java/C/C++/Python/R/SQL), with experience in at least one compiled language.
• Experience with a wide variety of machine learning techniques: clustering, dimensionality reduction, variable selection, cross validation, neural networks, gradient boosting, linear & logistic regression.
• Expertise in Unix/Linux: command line tools, shell scripting.
• Experience in managing multiple team members for at least 2 years.
• Experience in collaborating with business functions at least internally or externally.
• Native level Japanese and business level English proficiency (or vice versa).

Additional benefits:

• Ability to quickly come up with original mathematical models to address new problems.
• Experience in cards/payments, retail banking, or retail merchant industries.

Projects you will be a part of:

• Attrition and propensity modelling.
• Recommendation systems and clustering algorithms.
• Network analysis.
• LTV and forecasting algorithms.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the evolving visa/travel restrictions in place, we are currently only able to extend offers to candidates with the right to work in Japan and we are unable to offer new immigration sponsorship.

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider employing qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.