Data Scientist (AI-Native) — Growth & Credit

Skip To Job Description Umba Thanks for visiting our Career Page. Please review our open positions and apply to the positions that match your qualifications. Data Scientist (AI-Native) — Growth & Credit Kenya Full Time Experienced Share Data Scientist (AI-Native) — Growth & CreditLocation: Nairobi, Kenya (in-office)About UmbaUmba is a pan-African digital bank operating in Kenya and Nigeria, with a mission to make financial servicesmore accessible, affordable, and empowering for millions of people across Africa.We're transforming how banking works on the continent by building intelligent, automated financial productspowered by machine learning. Our platform offers digital banking, lending, and payments through Android,iOS, and Web applications, serving both individuals and businesses at scale.Headquartered in Nairobi, Umba acquired a licensed deposit-taking microfinance bank in 2023 and hassince grown revenue more than sixfold.We're looking for exceptional people who share our ambition, energy, and belief that technology can unlockfinancial freedom. Join us as we build Africa's leading digital bank.About the RoleWe're hiring a Data Scientist to own the two models that decide whether Umba grows profitably: how weacquire customers, and how we underwrite them.On the credit side, you'll build and continuously improve the scoring systems that decide who we lend to andon what terms — drawing on bank statement data, payments history, CRB (Credit Reference Bureau) data,and the behavioural signals we collect across our app. The same scoring stack needs to serve both digitallyacquired customers and the customers our sales team brings in for underwriting, so you'll design for bothflows.On the growth side, you'll optimize how we spend marketing budget to acquire those customers — adtargeting, funnel conversion, channel attribution, and the experiments that tell us which levers actually moveCAC and LTV. You'll own the loop from "who do we target" through "did they convert" through "did theyrepay."This is not a traditional data science role.We operate in an AI-native environment, where the team leverages Claude Code, Codex, and other LLMbased systems to accelerate analysis, generate model code, build pipelines, and iterate quickly. As a result,the role increasingly focuses on:Defining clear problem specs that AI agents can execute againstReviewing, validating, and hardening AI-generated analyses and codeBuilding feedback loops that let models improve automatically with new dataSetting the quality bar — what "good" looks like for a model in productionYou'll collaborate closely with Engineering, Product, and the Sales team to ship models that affect lendingdecisions on day one. This is a highly technical, in-office role in Nairobi. You'll join a small, high-performingteam where ownership is expected and impact is immediate.ResponsibilitiesCredit & underwritingBuild, deploy, and continuously improve credit scoring models using bank statement data, paymenthistories, CRB pulls, and in-app behavioural signalsDesign automated underwriting flows that serve both digitally acquired customers and salessourced applicationsImplement model retraining pipelines so scoring improves as we accumulate repayment outcomess - not as a quarterly projectOwn model performance monitoring, drift detection, and automated alertingPartner with Risk and Operations on policy thresholds, override rules, and the human-in-the-loop processes that wrap the modelsGrowth & marketing analyticsOptimize ad targeting across our acquisition channels — audience selection, bid strategy, creative performance, lookalike constructionInstrument and analyze the acquisition funnel end-to-end (impression → click → install → KYC → first loan → repayment)Design and run A/B tests on acquisition and product experiences; build the experimentation infrastructure so the team can run tests without youBuild attribution and LTV/CAC...