Senior Director, Risk Data Science

The Company

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. 

We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers.

We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards.  Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade. 

Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day.  We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Summary:

The Opportunity: Shaping the Future of Trust

We are seeking a visionary Senior Director of Risk Data Science to architect and lead the next generation of our fraud prevention capabilities. This is not a standard data science role; it is a high-visibility leadership position that will build and lead a team of ~75 data scientists. This Senior Director will report directly to our VP of Risk Data Science and AI, who in turn reports to our SVP of Global Fraud Prevention.

In this role, you will be the technical conscience and strategic driver for a team that processes billions of transactions. You will lead the charge in embedding deep learning, graph neural networks (GNNs), and large, complex language models into the very fabric of our real-time decisioning engines. You will own the "brain" that protects our customers from increasingly sophisticated threats—spanning identity theft, synthetic fraud, account takeovers, and scams—before they happen.

Job Description:

Essential Responsibilities:

• Define and drive the strategic vision for machine learning initiatives at the organizational level.

• Lead the development and optimization of state-of-the-art machine learning models.

• Oversee the preprocessing and analysis of large datasets.

• Deploy and maintain ML solutions in production environments.

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

• Monitor and evaluate the performance of deployed models, making necessary adjustments.

• Mentor and guide junior engineers and data scientists.

• Publish research findings and contribute to industry discussions.

• Represent the company at conferences and external engagements.

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

Expected Qualifications:

• 12+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.

• 5 years of experience leading others

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:

At PayPal, we are not just moving money; we are securing the global economy. As we accelerate our journey to become an AI-first fintech leader, the Global Risk Management organization has moved to the absolute front and center of our strategy. We are undergoing a massive transformation—moving from reactive fraud detection to proactive, autonomous fraud prevent