Head of Data Science

About us

At GoCardless, we’re passionate about payments. Our vision is to provide businesses with the best way to collect recurring payments, wherever they and their customers are in the world.

Today, we help over 60,000 businesses take the pain out of getting paid, so they can focus on what they do best. And through our partnerships with over 200 software providers such as Xero, Zuora, Salesforce and Quickbooks, more and more businesses are benefiting from our unique global payments platform every day. We process $15bn of payments a year across more than 30 countries, powering recurring payments for businesses worldwide, from multinational corporations to small businesses. 

We’re headquartered in the UK, and backed by some of the world’s leading investors including Google Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Balderton Capital, Accel Partners, Notion Capital and Bain Capital. Over 500 employees worldwide have decided to develop their careers with us. We’ve built a friendly, collaborative culture where we hire and develop people who share our desire to do work we can be proud of. We value learning and feedback, and support colleagues to develop in their role and more broadly in their career.

The role

We’re looking for a Head of Data Science to lead the development and execution of our Data Science initiatives.

Annual payment volume at GoCardless exceeds $1 billion, and we’re processing up to hundreds of thousands of transactions every day. As we grow, there is an increasing demand for data across all functions. Our ability to understand our users, and make sound and timely business decisions is hugely dependent our ability to extract meaning from this data.

The Data Science team exists to ultimately help both GoCardless and our merchants to deliver the best decisions, quickly and at scale globally. You will lead the Data Science team, making sure it can fulfil its objectives and initiatives to enhance GoCardless’ capabilities as a payments provider.

• You will hire, mentor and coach a team of talented Data Scientists.
• You will work closely with the Director of Engineering to ensure the data science teams are supported with engineering capability 
• You will plan long-term strategy and plot the team roadmap by collaborating with other business leaders such as the VP Product and other senior leaders around the business.
• You will develop data products in partnership with product managers.
• You will ensure that operational responsibilities are being met, and drive the adoption of best practices in testing, security, and monitoring the availability and correctness of data.
• You will act as the guardian of intellectual property, working closely with senior stakeholders to help the business determine its tangible value.

About You

• You’re a self-starter - you can independently drive your team's work forward, finding and exploiting opportunities where data science can impact our business objectives.
• You love digging into data and uncovering actionable and meaningful insights.
• You’re passionate about using data to help teams become more productive.
• You have intellectual curiosity.
• You are a communicative person that values building strong relationships with colleagues and stakeholders and have the ability to explain complex topics in simple terms.

We'd love to hear from you if you:

• Have experience hiring, leading and managing a team of Data Scientists.
• Are passionate about coaching, mentoring, and helping teammates advance in their careers.
• Have experienced in leading forward deployed teams, working in cross functional business units.
• Are a strong communicator with excellent stakeholder management skills, have the ability to influence at all levels and adapt styles to suit a variety of audiences.
• Have a background in Data Science at an IC level, with hands-on experience contributing to deep-dive analysis of complex data; managing data quality; feature selection; and prototyping, validation, and productionisation of Machine Learning and predictive models. 
• Have a background managing and shipping highly technical and complex projects.
• Have experience advocating for innovation and engineering best practice.

Bonus points for:

• A computer Science degree, or equivalent experience.
• A background in the FinTech space.

Life at GoCardless

Diversity is hugely important to us and we welcome applications from those with disabilities and from under-represented backgrounds. Throughout our hiring and onboarding process we make any reasonable adjustments necessary to create a level playing field and continually look at how we can improve in this area. We also have active ‘employee resource groups’ (such a BEAM and Rainbow) that are supported and sponsored by members of our Exec team; they work to engage and inspire our employees on diversity & inclusion topics throughout the year.

We offer flexible working hours and remote working arrangements, enhanced parental leave and pension packages. You’ll also receive equity, because we believe having this ‘buy in’ is a vital part of building a successful business where everybody - regardless of their role - can make a valuable contribution.

Here at GoCardless we value flexibility, and throughout the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic we've listened to our global GeeCees to gain a better understanding of the positives and negatives of working remotely (which we've been doing since March 2020).

Their feedback helped us develop our 'Adaptive Working' model, rolling out mid to late 2021. It's built around three components: days in the office, remote working, and enhanced environments. This means teams will be able to come into a GC office between one and three days per week for collaboration and teamwork, with the rest spent working remotely to enable a healthy work/life balance. We’ll also be reimagining our office environments so they enhance the collaboration and socialisation aspects our GeeCees told us they value most highly.

We continually review this approach in conjunction with the changing restrictions in each of our locations; additionally we offer support to maintain wellbeing and comfort, including subsidised home office equipment, workstation assessments and a range of remote social activities you can dip in and out of whenever you fancy.

Find out more about Life at GoCardless via Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.