Senior Data Scientist, Credit & Fraud Risk Modeling

About this role

Get to Know Us
Kafene is revolutionizing the lease-to-own space.
We're the point-of-sale powerhouse making flexible lease-to-own accessible to everyone—prime and non-prime customers alike. Our secret weapon? Cutting-edge AI and machine learning that analyzes 20,000+ data inputs in real-time, empowering retailers across furniture, appliances, electronics, tires, and durable goods to say "yes" to more customers.


The numbers tell our story:
over $500 million in sales
and counting. But we're just getting started
.
Our 150-person team spans NYC headquarters, Wilmington, and remote talent across the globe —all united by a culture that thrives on collaboration, innovation, and genuine support. We don't just talk about great workplace culture; we deliver it. That's why Built In named us a Startup to Watch and Forbes recognized us as one of the Best Startup Employers.


Ready to be part of the fintech revolution? Join us.


Credit and risk are at the heart of our business. We're looking for a Senior Data Scientist, a senior individual contributor who will own the full lifecycle of the ML models that power our credit risk decisions. Reporting directly to the VP of Risk, you'll design, build, deploy, and monitor the models that determine how we approve customers, set credit amounts, predict defaults, and forecast losses. You'll work closely with cross-functional partners across risk, engineering, finance, and sales, and you'll have the rare opportunity to shape both the technical infrastructure and the business strategy behind it.


What You'll Do

• Feature Engineering: Go beyond surface-level signals — you'll mine internal and external datasets to engineer high-signal features (DTI, PTI, payment behavior, account balance patterns) that directly improve the predictive power of production credit models. Your work here changes approval outcomes for real customers.
• Model Development: Own the end-to-end development of strategic credit risk ...