Staff Data Scientist

Visa's Post Purchase organisation is building AI-driven decision intelligence across dispute resolution and recovery products. We're seeking a Staff Data Scientist to lead high-impact machine learning initiatives that improve automation, recovery outcomes, and client experience at global scale.

This is a Staff-level individual contributor role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, owns complex problem spaces, and drives solutions from concept through production with measurable business impact. You will work with large-scale transactions and dispute data to develop models that enhance decision quality and enable scalable, intelligent systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and lead high-impact ML initiatives across dispute decisioning, merchant matching, and recovery prediction
• Own end-to-end ML lifecycle, including problem framing, feature engineering, model development, deployment, and monitoring
• Build and productionize scalable models using large-scale transaction and dispute datasets
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Data Engineering to translate business needs into data-driven solutions
• Drive adoption of ML solutions through explainability, performance measurement, and stakeholder alignment
• Develop experimentation frameworks to evaluate and continuously improve model performance
• Design and implement GenAI/LLM-based solutions for explainability, workflow automation, and decision support
• Influence product strategy by identifying opportunities to improve automation, efficiency, and customer outcomes
• Mentor junior team members and contribute to best practices across the data science organisation

Work Environment Visa requires employees to work in the office 3 days per week. Specific expectations will be confirmed by the Hiring Manager.

Qualifications Basic Qualifications:

• 5+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 2 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 0 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 8+ years of relevant work experience
• Experience with digital fluency, including the ability to work with emerging technologies such as Generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot) to support everyday work

Preferred Qualifications:

• 6+ years of experience with a Bachelor’s degree or 4+ years with an Advanced degree or up to 3 years with a PhD
• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in AI, Computer Science, Statistics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field
• Experience applying data science or analytics solutions to solve complex business problems with measurable outcomes
• Proven track record of commercializing analytical or ML solutions in production environments
• Strong experience managing or leading end-to-end projects across cross-functional teams
• Agile experience and ability to manage evolving priorities in dynamic environments
• Experience working with large-scale datasets and building scalable models
• Experience with distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Hadoop, Hive, Spark)
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or R, along with SQL
• Experience with version control tools such as git or GitHub
• Hands-on experience applying machine learning and predictive modeling techniques to business problems
• Experience in data science, data engineering, or analytics roles in large-scale environments
• Experience in payments, fraud, risk, disputes, fintech, or transaction-heavy domains
• Experience working in global organisations with distributed stakeholders
• Proven ability to lead projects, influence teams, and provide technical thought leadership