Senior Data Scientist
About the role
This is a hands-on Senior Data Scientist role at a fintech startup focused on building a merchant cash advance product for Sri Lankan SMEs. The position involves owning the risk model from initial deployment to retraining, advancing funds based on merchant transaction data, and transitioning from rules-based to machine learning models as data matures. Key responsibilities include managing scoring and offer-sizing rules, developing the path from rules to models, monitoring portfolio performance, reconciling merchant data, and delivering business-critical analytics. The role is central to the company's data function, working closely with leadership and operations, and offers the opportunity to build the first trained models on a live product.
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
The company is backed by Sri Lanka’s largest independent payment network and is well funded. The role offers direct access to founders and significant ownership of the data function. Experience in risk scoring, payments, or SME working-capital is a strong plus but not strictly required. The team is small and focused on high capacity rather than headcount. No explicit application deadline or process is mentioned.
Jobs across Sri Lanka, watched for you.Colombo, Sri Lanka