VP, Data Science

Job Description:

Role Summary/Purpose:

This position, within the Decision Management team, is highly technical and focuses on supporting critical strategies and decisions throughout the consumer and commercial account lifecycle where emphasis will be on developing, refining, and explaining complex ML models to drive decision-making and strategic planning across various business units

Our Way of Working

We’re proud to offer you choice and flexibility. At Synchrony, our way of working allows you to have the option to work from home, near one of our Hubs or come into one of our offices. Occasionally you may be required to commute to our nearest office for in person engagement activities such as business or team meetings, training and culture events.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Lead a team of data scientists and analysts, guiding them in applying best practices in ML model development, validation, and explanation.

• Engage with internal and external stakeholders to promote transparency and understanding of our machine learning models

• Design and deploy ML models, employing explainability (ex. Shapley values) techniques to ensure transparency, and accountability in model predictions.

• Utilize deep insights from previous second line experience to enhance risk identification, assessment, and response strategies within first line activities.

• Foster a proactive risk management culture within the first line teams, enabling them to understand, anticipate, and mitigate risks efficiently.

• Ensure the team has the right tools, processes and agile principles in place to deliver work that is on time and to specification

• Partner with multiple business stakeholders and cross-functional teams to design, develop, and execute advanced statistical and non-statistical solutions

• Drive best in class go-to-market big data modeling and analytics within Analytics by leveraging a broad stack of technologies — Python, H20, Machine Learning, SAS and more

• Act as the primary liaison for multiple cross functional stakeholders managing competing project deliverables in a fast paced and ever-changing business environment

• Partner with Synchrony leadership to drive strategic initiatives both inside the function and cross functionally

• Drive optimization and efficiency initiatives to support reduced cycle time

• Oversee the creation and maintenance of required documentation for all owned deliverables

• Support the model risk management process including model validation, response to independent review questions and assisting in the development of action plans to address model governance/validation findings

• Participate in regulatory reviews as required

• Keep pace with the latest developments in academia, regulatory environment, risk technology (vendor and inhouse) and financial services industry in order to provide expert guidance to the business functions

• Perform other duties and/or special projects as assigned

Qualifications/Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree with emphasis in Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Decision Science, Operations Research or other quantitative field OR, in lieu of degree, a high school diploma/GED and 12+ years of work-related analytic experience

• A minimum of 9+ years of progressive data analytics experience to include:

  • 4+ years of experience managing a team

  • 5+ years of experience in the banking or financial industry

  • 5+ years of experience programming with SAS, SQL, Python, or other relevant languages

  • 5+ years of experience in project management

Desired Characteristics:

• Graduate Degree in a quantitative field (Finance, Economics, Engineering, Math/Stat, Decision Science or similar)

• Direct experience with the application of regulatory requirements for Model Risk (e.g. SR 11-7/0CC 2011-12)

• Experience applying agile principles in a data science environment

• Strong leadership skills to drive change and results

• Strong influencing skills

• Self-motivated, positive attitude takes ownership and initiative to identify and solve problems

• Strong time management skills, ability to work independently, multi-task and quickly respond in a dynamic environment

• Demonstrated written/verbal communication & the ability to convey complex topics to a wide variety of audiences

• Experience using and successfully implementing Al/Machine Learning concepts