Sr Data Scientist

PayPal PayPal · Fintech · Chicago, IL +1 · Data Science

Senior Data Scientist at PayPal in Chicago, IL, focused on large-scale fraud prevention and risk management. The role involves managing the full lifecycle of data science solutions, from research to production, with a focus on bot mitigation, device intelligence, and evaluating cyber-security technologies. Responsibilities include overseeing platform performance, translating actions into business impact, mentoring team members, and managing a global team of data scientists.

What you'd actually do

  1. Manage the process to create large-scale data science strategies to combat fraud and balance risk, user experience, and financial performance.
  2. Own the full lifecycle of a solution, from the research phase to production.
  3. Oversee and monitor platform performance in production, evaluating false positives and defining thresholds for refinement.
  4. Lead the process of translating the team’s actions into financial business impact.
  5. Create and guide team in creating automatic auxiliaries, enhancing efficiency towards calculation/reporting milestones.

Skills

Required

  • Master’s degree, or foreign equivalent, in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Cybersecurity, or a closely related field plus two years of experience in the job offered or a related occupation OR Bachelor’s degree, or foreign equivalent, in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Cybersecurity, or a closely related field plus five years of experience in the job offered or a related occupation
  • Large-scale Fraud Prevention – Experience with large-scale fraud modus operandi and effective mitigation strategies, with emphasis on Customer identity abuses (2 years).
  • User Identity Risk – Experience with different aspects of Identity management and the challenges of balancing Risk with positive user experience (2 years).
  • Device Data Collection – Experience in collecting data and attributes from devices via web and mobile applications, its limitations and challenges (2 years).
  • Automation, Scripting, and Bot Detection – Experience developing and implementing strategies to identify and mitigate automated, bot-driven, or scripted activity (2 years).
  • CAPTCHA – Experience leveraging and evaluating different CAPTCHA vendors to prevent automated abuse using Google reCAPTCHA v2/v3, along with experience in limitations and manipulation detection (2 years).
  • Data Analytics using SQL– Experience analyzing and interpreting complex datasets to extract actionable insights and support business decision-making, along with experience in writing and optimizing complex SQL queries (2 years).
  • Coding – Coding experience in large enterprise environments, including working with JSON objects (2 years).
  • Network Protocols & Security Practices – Solid understanding of HTTP methods and TLS fingerprinting (2 years).
  • BigQuery & Looker – Experience building dashboards and reports in Looker for data visualization (1 year).
  • Log Analysis – Experience leveraging enterprise logging platforms such as Splunk, CAL and/or event tracking (1 year).

What the JD emphasized

  • large-scale fraud prevention
  • bot mitigation
  • cyber-security technologies

Other signals

  • fraud prevention
  • risk management
  • bot mitigation
  • device intelligence
  • cyber-security technologies