Senior Data Scientist

About the role

Wagetap is a fintech that gives people early access to up to $2,000 of their wages, having lent over $1B to Australians and supported more than 250,000 customers. It is now scaling globally with the US as its next market. The Senior Data Scientist works on the systems that determine who gets lent, how much and how risk is managed, in a highly applied role focused on credit models, experiments and real-world behaviour. The position is based in Sydney or Melbourne.

Key responsibilities

• Build, improve and extend credit and behavioural models, from problem framing to production.
• Build models for a market with no history, using lessons from home markets and other expansion projects.
• Design and run experiments such as A/B tests, policy changes and causal analysis to measure what works.
• Dig into root causes of metric movements, from repayment patterns to anomalies and fraud.
• Extend models to different loan tiers and develop stronger features.
• Work with engineering to productionise, monitor and explain models.
• Turn complex data into clear recommendations that shape commercial decisions.

Required profile

• At least 5 years of experience applying data science to real-world problems across analytics, modelling and experimentation.
• Hands-on experience designing and running experiments (A/B tests, sample sizing, causal inference).
• Experience owning production models and monitoring their performance over time.
• Ability to balance model performance with commercial outcomes.
• Clear communication, able to explain trade-offs and decisions to non-technical people.
• Intellectual range, curiosity and comfort in a scrappy, build-it-yourself environment.

Required skills

• Strong Python and SQL skills.
• ML techniques such as regression and tree-based models, with an eye on model explainability.

Nice to have

• Credit, lending or risk experience with high-volume behavioural data.
• Fintech or startup experience.
• AWS data tools (S3, Glue, SageMaker) or AI coding tools such as Claude Code.

What we offer

• Own a broad slice of the business as it scales globally.
• A profitable, stable company that is 100% self-reliant.
• Flexible, remote-friendly work: hybrid with 2 days a week in the Sydney or Melbourne CBD office.