Data Scientist, Underwriting

At Parafin, we’re on a mission to grow small businesses.

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, but traditional banks often don’t have their backs. We build tech that makes it simple for small businesses to access the financial tools they need through the platforms they already sell on.

We partner with companies like DoorDash, Amazon, Worldpay, and Mindbody to offer fast and flexible funding, spend management, and savings tools to their small business users via a simple integration. Parafin takes on all the complexity of capital markets, underwriting, servicing, compliance, and customer service for our partners.

We’re a tight-knit team of innovators hailing from Stripe, Square, Plaid, Coinbase, Robinhood, CERN, and more — all united by a passion for building tools that help small businesses succeed. Parafin is backed by prominent venture capitalists including GIC, Notable Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and Thrive Capital. Parafin is a Series C company, and we have raised more than $194M in equity and $340M in debt facilities.

Join us in creating a future where every small business has the financial tools they need.

Data science is integral to Parafin’s mission. Our platform partnerships and lending history provide rich insights into the financial health of small businesses around the world. This empowers us to create fair, automated, and broad access to financial services. As Parafin scales, the breadth and depth of our data grows with it, amplifying the impact we can have on customers and the trajectory of our business.

Enthusiasm, skepticism, and respect for data are in our DNA – two of our co-founders were PhD data scientists at Robinhood. Since our founding, we have grown the team to include perspectives from graduate studies in physics, mathematics, bioengineering, economics, financial engineering, and electrical engineering and professional experience at Robinhood, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Faire, Segment, Facebook, and Google. We value first-principles thinking, attention to detail, and craftsmanship.

You will make an outsized impact on Parafin’s trajectory by leading projects from end to end. You will quickly learn new methods, apply them across diverse areas of the business, and implement them robustly. You will develop expertise in specific areas of the business, but may tackle projects across domains as our priorities evolve.

You’ll own the full data-science lifecycle, from research to deployment, to power our underwriting engine. Specifically, you will:

• Design, train, and deploy production underwriting models

• Design experiments and metrics to drive risk and pricing decisions

• Partner with engineering and product teams to architect automated underwriting systems

• Identify business opportunities to improve growth and profitability via improvements to our underwriting posture

We are open to candidates from a variety of academic backgrounds and professional experiences. We believe the most effective data scientists bring the following skills to their work:

• Statistical Reasoning

  • Approach data analysis with a critical, intellectually honest eye

  • Design concise metrics that guide decision making

  • Employ robust experimental design and causal inference methods

  • Develop valid and predictive machine learning models

• Business Acumen

  • Identify and effectively prioritize business problems

  • Solve business problems using appropriate data science techniques

  • Anticipate the impact of your work on our financial performance, customers, and compliance obligations

• Engineering Mindset

  • Write legible, reliable, and tested code

  • Build or source tools to boost the team’s efficiency

  • Architect technical systems that are highly scalable, reliable, and observable

• Leadership and Collaboration

  • Model Parafin’s values of efficiency, intellectual honesty, accountability, and empathy

  • Build trusted relationships with stakeholders

  • Document work, seek feedback, and share learnings proactively

• Focused Execution

  • Prioritize high-impact use of your time

  • Scope projects rigorously

  • Act with urgency