Director, Merchant Risk Data Science

Paysafe is a leading payments platform with an extensive track record of serving merchants and consumers in the global entertainment sectors. Its core purpose is to enable businesses and consumers to connect and transact seamlessly through industry-leading capabilities in payment processing, digital wallet, and online cash solutions. With 29 years of online payment experience, an annualized transactional volume of $152 billion in 2024, and approximately 3,300 employees located in 12+ countries, Paysafe connects businesses and consumers across 260 payment types in 48 currencies around the world. Delivered through an integrated platform, Paysafe solutions are geared toward mobile-initiated transactions, real-time analytics and the convergence between brick-and-mortar and online payments. Further information is available at www.paysafe.com. 

It starts here. Have a global impact on the world of payments.

As Director, Merchant Risk Data Science, you will play a hands-on technical leadership role, working with groups of data scientists, driving the design and delivery of next-generation AI/ML models for merchant risk at Paysafe. Reporting to the Head of Merchant Data Science, you will focus on advanced modelling, applied research, and production delivery, building on existing foundational models to push capability into modern AI techniques.

The role is highly technical, requiring deep expertise in advanced machine learning techniques, capable of taking research-grade ideas (e.g. Transformers, representation learning, graph models) and turning them into real, production-ready risk solutions across Paysafe’s payment platforms.

What Paysafe stands for:

• Being open and honest.
• Keeping focused.
• Operating with Courage.
• Pioneering the future.

Our values and culture are driven by Equality, Development, Social Responsibility and Wellbeing. If you want to find out more about life at Paysafe, check out our careers page here. 

How we work:

We follow a hybrid working model, spending an average of three days per week at our office location. The office is located in Gresham Street next to St Paul’s cathedral with easy access and transport links via St Paul’s, Bank, Cannon Street, City Thameslink, Liverpool Street, Farringdon, Mansion House.

The impact you will have:

• Design, prototype, and productionalize advanced AI/ML models for merchant fraud, abuse, chargebacks, and anomalous behaviour.
• Lead the adoption of modern modelling techniques, including:

• Transformers and sequence models
• Representation learning & embeddings
• Autoencoders and anomaly detection
• Graph / network-based models
• Semi-supervised and weakly supervised learning

• Own the end-to-end model lifecycle: problem framing, feature representation, model development, validation, deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
• Partner closely with Risk Strategy, Operation, MLOps and Data Engineering to ensure models are scalable, explainable, and production-ready in real-time or near-real-time environments (e.g. AWS SageMaker)
• Act as a technical authority for advanced AI in merchant risk, influencing architecture, tooling, and long-term modelling strategy.
• Balance innovation with model governance, regulatory expectations, and risk controls, without limiting technical ambition.
• Partner with Data Engineering to shape:

• data requirements for advanced models
• feature stores and pipelines

- the evolution of merchant risk data infrastructure

• Act as a bridge between research, engineering, and business, ensuring models are both technically strong and operationally impactful

What we’re looking for – Experience & Profile:

• 10+ years in data science / advanced analytics, with strong hands-on delivery experience.
• Demonstrated experience working with modern AI/ML techniques beyond tree-based models.
• Proven ability to take research concepts into production.
• Experience in payments, fraud, or risk is valuable but not mandatory.

What we’re looking for – Technical Skills:

• Expert-level Python and modern ML tooling.
• Strong hands-on experience with:

• Transformers, LSTM / sequence models
• Representation learning & embeddings
• Autoencoders & anomaly detection
• Graph / network modelling

• Experience operationalising models on AWS SageMaker (or equivalent).
• Strong understanding of model evaluation, explainability, and monitoring in high-risk environments.

What we’re looking for – Education:

• Advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science, AI/ML, or a related field.
• PhD or equivalent advanced industry experience preferred.

A snippet of what you’ll get in return:

• Make your day work for you with our flexible working hours.
• You decide what your holiday looks like with the option to buy or sell your holiday and carry over up to 5 days into the next year.
• Enjoy social events on our roof top terrace with views onto St Pauls Cathedral.
• Our fully equipped facilities include showers, hairdryers and straighteners and fresh towels.
• Start your day with a free breakfast, fresh fruit and snacks.
• Take a breather in our dedicated wellbeing room.
• Spend time with those important to you with our enhanced paid family policies.
• Test our products Skrill and Neteller. Upon joining we will award you £50 into each wallet.
• Enjoy our discounts on memberships via vitality including, gyms, leisure centres, yoga/Pilates across the country.
• Need a new Laptop or TV? We offer support purchasing Apple and LG products via Stormfront technology.
• Join our six employee-led equality communities and help foster a workplace that celebrates diversity and create opportunities to collaborate and learn.
• Give back to the community with four paid charity days.
• Kickstart your weekend early with our summer hours during the months of June, July and August with a 3pm finish every Friday.
• Let’s not forget, we also offer: Private health insurance (pre-existing conditions are included) & dental insurance, income protection, life assurance and more.

What to expect next:

1. Phone screen with Talent Acquisition.
2. Video interview with the Hiring Manager.
3. Technical interview with team member.
4. In-person interview with CDO and Talent Acquisition.

If you’re successful joining the team, you’ll be meeting our CEO in person during our new joiners breakfast in London – a great opportunity to network with your peers.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Paysafe is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and are committed to providing a work environment of mutual respect to everyone without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.