Senior Data Scientist
About the role
This is a hands-on Senior Data Scientist role at a fintech startup in Sri Lanka, focused on building and owning risk models for a merchant cash advance product. The position involves developing and maintaining the scoring and offer-sizing rules, transitioning from rules to machine learning models, managing and reconciling merchant data, and delivering business-critical analytics and reporting. The role requires end-to-end ownership of the data science function, from data pipelines to model deployment and performance monitoring, in a fast-paced, AI-driven environment. The company is well-funded, operates within a major payment network, and offers direct access to founders and decision-makers.
Must have
- 3–5+ years of applied machine learning in production with real decisions riding on it — you’ve owned a model end to end and know when a percentile rank beats a deep net
- Fluent in Python (pandas, scikit-learn, gradient boosting) and SQL; you build with AI tooling — Claude Code, Cursor and the like — and ship real work with it
- You turn raw logs into clean features, defend every number, and design pilots that yield next year’s labels
- A doer. You chase the missing extract, close the loop with the data owner, and take pride in the unglamorous work that makes a model trustworthy.
Nice to have
- Risk scoring, payments or SME working-capital experience is a strong plus — scorecards, PD models, collections, reject inference — or show us you learn new domains fast
Technologies
- Claude Code
- Cursor
- Data Science
- Machine Learning
- pandas
- Python
- scikit-learn
- SQL
Highlights
Applicants are invited to send a short note and CV to suraen@payable.lk. The role is based in Sri Lanka and is backed by the country's largest independent payment network. You will be the primary data science function in the team, with a direct line to the founders.
Jobs across Sri Lanka, watched for you.Colombo, Sri Lanka