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DailyPay · 1 day ago

Sr Director, Data Science

NYC Headquarters

Full-time

Hybrid

Director/Executive

$240K/yr - $336K/yr

15+ years exp

DailyPay is transforming the way people get paid as a leading worktech company. The Sr Director of Data Science will lead a team to define the strategy and vision for Payments & risk data science, while overseeing the development of models to improve performance and prevent fraud.

Employee BenefitsEnterprise ApplicationsFinancial ServicesFinTech

H1B Sponsor Likely

Responsibilities

Define and Champion Strategy: Develop and articulate the 1-3 year roadmap for Data Science, aligning all priorities with the broader product/business objectives

Drive Next-Generation Capabilities: Incorporate industry trends and advanced techniques (NLP, Graph Mining, LLMs, Deep Learning) to solve complex, high-impact risk problems where established principles may not fully apply

Talent and Team Development: Lead the current team of high-performing Staff and Senior Data Scientists. Recruit, mentor, and foster talent through deliberate interactions, succession planning, and creating a high-accountability, low-ego culture

Stakeholder Alignment: Interact and negotiate with senior management and Product Leads to reconcile competing views and drive critical, high-impact business decisions

Influence the direction of the company's AI/ML strategy and contribute to long-term planning

Payment Models: Directly oversee the development and deployment of Earned Wage Access payment models designed to safely advance pay to workers while maintaining loss guardrails

Fraud Prevention: Develop advanced fraud prevention measures and models embedded into real-time decisioning to protect from increasingly sophisticated threats—spanning identity theft, synthetic fraud, account takeovers, and scams—before they happen

Loss Mitigation: Drive the successful build-out and implementation of predictive loss models and rules to pre-empt operating losses from advances

Loss Forecasting & Compliance: Lead the development of Loss Forecasting and CECL models, ensuring they align with industry practices and meet all regulatory requirements for the firm's balance sheet and reserve calculations

Automation and Efficiency: Lead efforts to automate model monitoring and governance processes (MLOps) to create scalable and auditable infrastructure

Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate ML models into products and services

Qualification

AI/ML strategyPayments ecosystemFraud prevention modelsDeep LearningPythonSQLMLOpsStakeholder alignmentTeam leadershipCommunication skills

Required

15+ years of progressive experience in payments, risk and fraud with at least 7 years in a senior leadership/management role (managing managers and/or technical leads)

Proven track record of building and mentoring expert AI/ML teams that consistently deliver innovative solutions, resulting in measurable business impact and sustained competitive advantage

Deep familiarity with the payments ecosystem (issuing, acquiring, gateways, ACH/Rails) and the unique adversarial nature of financial fraud within a regulated financial institution (FinTech, Bank, or similar)

Advanced Degree: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field is highly preferred

Applied AI Scale: Experience deploying GNNs or Transformer-based models in a high-throughput, low latency production environment (not just offline research)

Transformation Experience: A track record of modernizing legacy model stacks (e.g., moving from logistic regression/forests to Deep Learning/AI) in a large enterprise

Tools & Platforms: Expert-level proficiency in Python (PySpark, scikit-learn, TensorFlow/PyTorch) and SQL/data warehouse technologies (e.g., Snowflake, Hive). Familiarity with modern MLOps platforms and cloud computing (AWS)

Communication: Exceptional executive presence and the ability to distill highly complex analytical concepts into clear, concise, and compelling narratives for non-technical leadership

Preferred

Advanced Degree: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field is highly preferred

Benefits

Competitive compensation

Opportunity for equity ownership

Exceptional health, vision, and dental care

Employee Resource Groups

Fun company outings and events

Unlimited PTO

401K with company match

Company

DailyPay

Glassdoor3.3

DailyPay provides on-demand pay solutions for employees, allowing them to access earned wages before payday.

Founded in 2015

New York, New York, USA

501-1000 employees

https://www.dailypay.com

H1B Sponsorship

DailyPay has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)

Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship

Represents job field similar to this job

Trends of Total Sponsorships

2025 (2)

2021 (2)

Funding

Current Stage

Late Stage

Total Funding

$1.74B

Key Investors

CitiCarrick Capital PartnersBarclays Corporate Banking

2026-01-05Debt Financing· $195M

2025-06-30Debt Financing· $200M

2024-10-24Debt Financing· $100M

Leadership Team

Nelson Chai

CEO

Caitlin Allen

Chief Communications Officer (CCO)

Recent News

Financial IT

Stinker Stores Improves Employee Retention by 45% Tenure With DailyPay

2026-01-16

Payments Dive

House Democrat joins EWA effort

2026-01-16

Crowdfund Insider

Worktech DailyPay Secures $195 Million Credit Facility to Fuel Growth in On-Demand Pay

2026-01-12

Company data provided by crunchbase