Senior Data Scientist (Applied ML)

The role

You will lead the development of production-grade machine learning solutions for customer lifetime value, lead scoring, and recommendation engines. You will partner with cross-functional teams to translate business problems into scalable ML solutions using the Databricks ecosystem.

What you will do

• Lead end-to-end development of advanced machine learning models for LTV, conversion propensity, lead quality, and revenue optimization.
• Translate model predictions into actionable signals for marketing and acquisition.
• Develop recommendation and ranking models to identify relevant financial products.
• Collaborate with Product and Marketing to integrate predictive intelligence into consumer experiences.
• Leverage Databricks and MLflow to develop, train, deploy, monitor, and manage machine learning models at scale.
• Establish DS practices including experiment tracking, model versioning, and automated training pipelines.
• Define standards for model performance, reliability, retraining, and production readiness.
• Design and evaluate experiments to measure incremental business impact.
• Serve as a technical leader mentoring other practitioners and influencing architectural decisions.

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in Data Science, Applied Machine Learning, or a related field.
• Hands-on Databricks experience including building and managing production machine learning workflows using MLflow and the Databricks ML ecosystem.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Extensive experience using modern machine learning frameworks such as scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM, PyTorch, or TensorFlow.
• Strong understanding of supervised learning, predictive modeling, classification, regression, ranking, and model evaluation techniques.
• Practical experience designing scalable batch and/or real-time inference systems.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals including version control, testing, modular code design, and CI/CD practices.
• Ability to independently lead complex, ambiguous technical initiatives.
• Strong business acumen.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Bachelor's or advanced degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision health care plans
• Flexible Vacation Time Off plus 11 holidays and holiday company shutdown
• New Parent Leave
• Mental health support
• Paid sabbatical after 5 years
• Health and Dependent Care FSA and HSA Plan with monthly NerdWallet contribution
• Monthly Wellness Stipend
• Cell Phone Stipend
• Wifi Stipend (remote only)
• Work from home equipment stipend (remote only)
• Co-working space subsidy (remote only)
• Employee Resource Groups

About the company

NerdWallet's mission is to provide clarity for all of life's financial decisions. Data Science helps the company understand consumers, personalize experiences, and connect them with financial products.