Staff Data Scientist, Credit Policy (Square Financial Services)

Block builds simple, powerful tools that make progress towards an economy that’s truly open to all.

The Credit and Lending team is responsible for the predictive intelligence that underpins Block’s primary capital-intensive products. These products unlock unique access to credit for customers, many of whom are otherwise underbanked and underserved by the traditional financial system. As a member of the Credit Policy team within Square Financial Services (SFS), you will occupy a high-leverage role at the intersection of regulated banking and advanced autonomous systems.

Responsibilities:

• Apply a rigorous scientific mindset to the challenge of underwriting new customer segments, involving the evaluation of alternative external data sources and the design of new policy strategies to expand access while protecting the portfolio.
• Own credit policy governance and reporting: maintain policy documentation, change logs, and approval artifacts, and deliver recurring portfolio performance and policy-impact reporting to credit risk committees, senior leadership, and bank oversight functions.
• Propose and design experiments for credit products , champion/challenger tests, randomized holdouts, and staged rollouts across approval, limit, and pricing strategy , with clear hypotheses, success metrics, guardrails, and loss-exposure budgets.
• Review experiment designs proposed by partner teams, assessing statistical rigor, sample sizing, risk exposure, fair lending considerations, and alignment with credit policy and regulatory requirements before launch.
• Form policy guidelines and frameworks , risk appetite thresholds, approval and limit standards, and concentration limits , that enable credit portfolios to scale responsibly while meeting growth, loss, and profitability objectives.
• Partner with Risk Management, Compliance and Internal Audit teams to ensure policy changes meet governance standards and are well documented and exam-ready.
• Support team members in ad-hoc and scheduled updates to existing policies and strategies, and help troubleshoot issues in a real-time production environment.
• Operate effectively within the framework of a regulated bank (SFS), balancing rapid innovation with the requirements of safety, soundness, and compliance.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 6+ years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 3+ years experience; or equivalent experience
• A degree in a technical field (e.g., Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, or Engineering)
• Demonstrated experience in credit policy governance at a bank, fintech, or consumer/small business lender
• Hands-on experience proposing, designing, and reviewing experiments for credit products
• A track record of building and owning portfolio monitoring and reporting
• Experience translating business objectives into credit policy guidelines
• Familiarity with regulatory expectations for credit products is strongly preferred
• Strong quantitative intuition and data visualization skills
• Strong proficiency in SQL and Python preferred
• The versatility to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical audiences
• A pragmatic approach to problem-solving

Salary Information:

• Zone A: $198,000-$297,000 USD
• Zone B: $188,100-$282,100 USD
• Zone C: $178,200-$267,400 USD
• Zone D: $168,300-$252,500 USD