Data Scientist at FNB South Africa

Job Description

• To plan, build, optimise and implement innovative quantitative analytical methodologies, procedures, products and advanced
• mathematical models that provide analytical support and interpret insights, using advanced analytics technologies, to address business opportunities and problems and implement business strategy.
• Lead a small team of high performing entry to senior level Data Scientists in Credit Collections Analytics environment.
• Use statistical methods and tools to analyze data and identify trends, pattens and draw insights.
• Build, implement and monitor a range of data driven statistical models to improve credit collections processes, customer experience and business profitability.
• Create delivery plans for achievement of outputs / deliverables in collaboration with business stakeholders to understand information requirements for strategy delivery and define metrics that track performance.
• Drive project planning, prioritizing and efficient project delivery.
• Build strategic solutions that analyze processes to recommend areas for optimization to achieve cost savings, revenue generation and efficiency improvements for the business.
• Adhere to model building policies, standards, frameworks, and governance process.
• Plan and perform regular model updates that capture evolving business complexity in current models.
• Drive process automation, optimization and productionalize existing and new business strategies and models into relevant platforms.
• Foster a culture of learning, upskilling and excellence withing your high performing team.
• Foster strong relationships with stakeholders, building trust and ensuring effective communication.
• Continuously challenge the status quo and contribute to the innovation and strategic direction of the department.
• Ensure own ethical usage of information that complies to restrictions applied for privacy and sensitivity classification.
• Collaborate with numerous departments across the business to improve processes and eliminate duplication of efforts.
• Build and sustain collaborative working relationships with relevant peers and stakeholders to achieve productivity synergies.
• Serve as SME for analytics applying own understanding of the operations of the business product or service.
• Implement Machine learning mathematical algorithms and automation techniques using open-source programming languages such as SAS or Python libraries.
• Utilise data to model complex abstractions in machine learning research to enable deep learning.
• Challenge current models to ensure relevance and accuracy of outputs.
• Take all necessary actions to ensure compliance with relevant statutory, legislative, policy and governance requirements in area of accountability.
• Ensure compliance is adopted in terms of systems and procedures as laid out by business.
• Document developed models, business processes, project specifications to address specific business requirements.

Ideal Candidate:

• Strong technical and statistical modelling skills.
• Knowledge of machine leaning methodologies data and analytics.
• Understanding of credit collections and operational processes.
• Understanding of the credit life cycle.
• Strong stakeholder management skills

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in actuarial science, Quantitative Risk, Mathematics, or Statistics or similar.
• Honours or master’s degree would be advantageous.
• 5-8 years' experience in a similar role with leadership experience.
• Proficient in SAS and SQL