ABOUT HAPPY MONEY AND THE TEAM
Happy Money® is building a happier and more equitable financial ecosystem that seamlessly blends psychology, technology, and a focus on happiness to help consumers go from borrower to saver, investor, and giver. The company provides a path toward improving financial well-being and securing greater happiness – beginning with paying off credit card debt – through its science-enabled, purpose-driven marketplace between mission-aligned capital and consumers.
Backed by leading investors including Anthemis Group, Tencent Holdings and CMFG Ventures, Happy Money has helped nearly 150,000 members pay off more than $2.7 billion in credit card debt since inception through its award-winning Payoff Loan™. Founded in 2009, Happy Money has a diverse employee base of over 350 people across the United States.
ABOUT THE ROLE
Happy Money’s Data Science team is the foundation of the company’s success, and is central to bringing the company’s mission to life. Our multidisciplinary team includes versatile full stack data scientists, as well as specialists in machine learning, statistics, behavioral science, and analytics. We have a curiosity-driven culture where team members have the autonomy to deliver impact through end-to-end development and ownership. Models, algorithms, and ML technology developed by the team solve core business problems throughout the company, including the assessment of creditworthiness, fraud detection, financial forecasting, personalization of member growth journeys, and marketing optimization.
In this role, you will have a unique opportunity to build data-driven solutions that apply to all facets of the Happy Money ecosystem. This includes financial, marketing, and product modeling using proprietary and alternative data sources, increasing access to credit and availability of our financial products. Now is an exciting time to join the Happy Money team, as the company is growing rapidly and scaling quickly. The predictive modeling carried out by the Data Science team is core to the company’s philosophy and success, making each team member a vital contributor to the company as a whole.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
- Build production machine learning models for our core business; your models will be the basis for lending decisions, product personalization, and marketing strategy
- Work closely with the Business Strategy, Product, Engineering, UX Research, Marketing, and Operations teams to shape the future of our products using scientific rigor to build solutions
- Design, implement, productionize and deploy innovative data science solutions to bring to life data-driven decisions at scale
- Drive the development and inclusion of new innovative data sources and features, and refine existing data sources and features
- Uncover psychological and behavioral markers of positive financial outcomes to help educate members, facilitate positive habit formation, and increase the utility of our products
- Communicate your results, analyses, and findings by incorporating them into a larger story, rather than just reporting data and metrics
- Be a thought pioneer in new and ongoing directions of scientific research and implementation at the company level
ESSENTIAL SKILLS
- 5+ years business and/or academic experience working with and analyzing large data sets to solve problems
- A PhD or MS in a quantitative field (e.g., Economics, Statistics, Engineering, Natural Sciences, Operations Research)
- Expert knowledge of a scientific computing language (such as R or Python) and SQL
- Experience with the AWS technical stack and data infrastructure such as Spark, Hive, Hadoop, and EMR
- Strong knowledge of statistics, machine learning and optimization
- Demonstrated track record of identifying, scoping and carrying out complex data science projects with cross-functional collaboration and quantified results
- Ability to communicate complex quantitative analysis in a clear, precise, and actionable manner
- A desire to change the financial world for the better and a real desire to help people find success in life and finances
- A strong desire to have fun working on very challenging problems. We have a highly collaborative culture of curiosity and celebrating each other's insights and achievements!
Here at Happy Money, we live by our core values of Love, Trust, and Hustle and welcome all. Love is shown in how we develop meaningful relationships with everyone we interact with; whether it’s a member or your manager. Trust is shown through how we empower each other to come to work as our true selves and embrace our differences. Hustle is shown through how we fail fast and learn from our mistakes. No one is perfect, we’re all human; if this job description doesn’t exactly match your background, we encourage you to apply anyway!
