Senior Data Scientist (Applied ML)

The posting, as NerdWallet wrote it

At NerdWallet, our mission is to provide clarity for all of life's financial decisions. Data Science plays a critical role in delivering on that mission, helping us better understand our consumers, personalize their experiences, and connect them with the financial products that best meet their needs.

We’re growing, and we’re looking for a Senior Data Scientist (Applied ML) to join us as a foundational member of our new team. You’ll help shape and advance our machine learning capabilities across consumer personalization, predictive modeling, and performance marketing, with a real voice in how we work from day one. Together, we’re building an inclusive, supportive team culture where we lift each other up and succeed together to drive business impact across the organization.

In this role, you will lead the development of production-grade machine learning solutions that power some of NerdWallet's most critical business decisions. From predicting customer lifetime value and scoring incoming leads in real time to developing recommendation engines that connect consumers with the right financial products, your work will have a direct impact on how we acquire, engage, and monetize our customer relationships.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role for someone with deep expertise in applied machine learning, production ML systems, and the Databricks ecosystem. As a foundational member of the team, you’ll partner closely with Data Engineering, Product, Marketing, and Analytics to translate complex business problems into scalable ML solutions, while helping establish the technical standards and best practices for machine learning across NerdWallet.

WHERE YOU CAN MAKE AN IMPACT

Build Predictive Models That Drive Business Growth

• Lead the end-to-end development of advanced machine learning models focused on customer lifetime value (LTV), conversion propensity, lead quality, and revenue optimization.
• Translate model predictions into actionable signals that improve marketing investment decisions, customer acquisition efficiency, and long-term profitability.

Advance Personalization & Recommendation Systems

• Develop recommendation and ranking models that identify the most relevant financial products for individual consumers based on their needs, behaviors, and predicted propensity to engage or convert.
• Explore and implement approaches such as propensity modeling, learning-to-rank, and next-best-product recommendations to improve customer engagement and cross-sell opportunities.
• Collaborate with Product and Marketing to integrate predictive intelligence into consumer experiences and personalized communications.

Establish Best-in-Class ML Practices

• Leverage Databricks and MLflow to develop, train, deploy, monitor, and manage machine learning models at scale.
• Establish robust DS practices, including experiment tracking, model versioning, feature engineering, automated training pipelines, model monitoring, and rep

[…]
off per quarter and donate to your favorite causes with a company match

Plan for your future (And when you retire on your island, remember the little people)

• 401K with 4% company match
• Be the first to test and benefit from our new financial products and tools
• Financial wellness, guidance, and unlimited access to a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) through Northstar
• Disability and Life Insurance with employer-paid premiums

If you are based in California, we encourage you to read this important information for California residents linked here https://www.nerdwallet.com/privacy-policy.

NerdWallet is committed to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We prohibit discrimination and harassment on the basis of any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law, so all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment.

NerdWallet will consider qualified applicants with a criminal history pursuant to the California Fair Chance Act and the San Francisco Fair Chance Act, which requires this notice https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2022-12/FCO%20poster2020_0.pdf, as well as the Los Angeles Fair Chance Act, which requires this notice https://dcba.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FCOE-Official-Notice-Eng-Final-8.30.2024.pdf.

NerdWallet participates in the Department of Homeland Security U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services E-Verify program for all US locations. For more information, please see:

• E-Verify Participation Poster (English+Spanish/Español https://www.e-verify.gov/sites/default/files/everify/posters/EVerifyParticipationPoster.pdf)
• Right to Work Poster (English) https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Verification/E-Verify/E-Verify_Native_Documents/OSC_Right_to_Work_Poster.pdf / (Spanish/Español) https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Verification/E-Verify/E-Verify_Native_Documents/OSC_Right_to_Work_Poster_ES.pdf

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