{"id":2184299,"url":"https://alion.io/job/checkout-com-director-data-science-payment-performance","title":"Director, Data Science - Payment Performance","company":{"id":51355,"name":"Checkout.com","domain":"checkout.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/checkout-com","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":91,"open_postings":16,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.313,"repost_share":0.063,"time_to_fill_p50_days":47,"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":138000,"max_usd":260000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":54},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Anomaly Detection","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-09T12:43:22Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-09","last_verified_at":"2026-10-14T13:40:03Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":5,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":5},"description":"Company Description\nWe’re Checkout.com. You might not know our name, but companies like eBay, Spotify, Klarna, Uber, and Sony do, because we’re behind many of the digital experiences you use every day. \nWe are where the world checks out, enabling over 10 billion transactions yearly for more than one billion global shoppers. \nWhether you want to book a holiday, order food, renew a subscription, or check out online, there’s a good chance our tech powers the payments behind the scenes. Our platform helps the most ambitious businesses deliver effortless digital experiences, at scale. \nIf you want to do career-defining work, you’ve come to the right place. We move fast, think globally, and believe great teams are built by hiring exceptional people with conviction, curiosity, and the desire to make an impact. \nWith 20 offices across six continents and London as our HQ, we’re shaping the future of fintech - and we’re just getting started.\nThe opportunity\nCheckout.com helps businesses thrive in the digital economy by making payments work better. Within Payment Performance, Data Science is central to how we improve acceptance, reduce payment costs and protect merchants and Checkout from fraud.\nWe are looking for a Data Science leader to bring our Fraud and Acceptance Data Science teams together behind one strategy and way of working. The teams already exist and are building important products. Your job is to help them work as one organization, raise the bar for how models are developed and operated, and turn more of their work into measurable production impact.\nYou will lead a distributed group of Data Scientists working on real-time decisioning at global payments scale. The problems range from fraud detection and adaptive risk strategies to authorization optimization, routing and recovery. The common thread is using machine learning to make better decisions on every payment.\nThis is a player-coach role. You will set direction and develop the organization, but remain close enough to the work to challenge technical choices, lead design reviews and contribute directly when the problem calls for it.\nWhat you’ll do\nSet the Data Science strategy\nCreate one Data Science strategy across fraud and payment optimization, connected to the wider Payment Performance vision.\n\nDecide where we should invest across models, data, experimentation and shared capabilities to create the greatest business impact.\n\nBuild common technical standards and ways of working without forcing different problem domains into the same approach.\n\nIdentify where new scientific methods or data assets could create a lasting competitive advantage.\n\nTurn models into production impact\nOwn the end-to-end model lifecycle, from problem framing and experimentation through evaluation, launch and production performance.\n\nImprove measurable outcomes across fraud, acceptance and payment cost, with models that operate safely and reliably at scale.\n\nEnsure teams optimize for business and merchant outcomes rather than research output or offline model metrics alone.\n\nRaise the standard for experimentation, explainability, monitoring, drift detection and model iteration.\n\nWork with Engineering to make productionization a shared responsibility: Data Science owns model performance, while Engineering owns platform reliability and deployment infrastructure.\n\nPartner with Product and Engineering\nJointly prioritize the roadmap with the Fraud and Intelligent Acceptance Group Product Managers.\n\nEnsure Product owns merchant problems, desired outcomes and commercial trade-offs, while Data Science owns scientific direction, model quality and technical standards.\n\nTranslate complex scientific choices into clear product, customer and investment decisions.\n\nPartner with Engineering leaders on the architecture and capabilities needed for low-latency, resilient ML systems.\n\nSpend time with merchants when direct technical engagement can uncover a better problem, build confidence or demonstrate value.\n\nLead and grow the organization\nLead, coach and develop Data Scientists across Fraud and Acceptance, initially managing much of the team directly.\n\nCreate clear ownership, goals and development paths across a distributed organization.\n\nDevelop future domain leads who can take on more day-to-day technical and people leadership as the teams grow.\n\nHire exceptional scientists and build a culture that combines scientific rigor, pace, curiosity and accountability.\n\nCreate an environment where senior scientists can challenge assumptions, do their best work and connect it to outcomes that matter.\n\nStay close to the science\nAct as a technical sounding board for senior scientists across modelling, experimentation and ML-system design.\n\nLead or contribute to design reviews, prototypes and selected analyses where your involvement can materially improve the outcome.\n\nChallenge teams to choose practical methods that fit the business problem, rather than defaulting to the most complex approach.\n\nKeep the organization current on developments in applied AI and machine learning, and translate relevant advances into production opportunities.\n\nWhat success looks like\nIn your first 12-18 months, you will have:\nUnited the Fraud and Acceptance teams behind one Data Science strategy and operating model.\n\nImproved the production impact of models across fraud, acceptance and cost optimization.\n\nEstablished clear decision rights and an effective joint roadmap with Product and Engineering.\n\nRaised standards for model development, productionization, monitoring and measurement.\n\nCreated stronger consistency across the teams while preserving the expertise each domain requires.\n\nDeveloped future technical and people leaders who can support the organization as it grows.\n\nWhat we’re looking for\nEssential\nA strong record of leading Data Scientists who build real-time or high-scale machine-learning products.\n\nDeep technical judgment across applied machine learning, experimentation, model evaluation and production ML systems.\n\nExperience taking models beyond notebooks and offline metrics into reliable products with measurable business impact.\n\nThe ability to coach scientists at different levels and challenge senior technical contributors with credibility.\n\nProven success leading distributed teams through change, ambiguity and growth.\n\nStrong product judgment: you can connect scientific work to customer problems, commercial trade-offs and company strategy.\n\nThe confidence to influence senior leaders, challenge priorities and explain complex technical ideas in simple language.\n\nA practical, curious mindset and a bias toward shipping, learning and improving.\n\nWe care more about the scale and impact of the systems and teams you have led than a fixed number of years in a particular title.\nValuable, but not required\nExperience in payment fraud, authorization optimization, routing, recommendations or another real-time decisioning domain.\n\nKnowledge of highly imbalanced classification, anomaly detection, graph methods, reinforcement learning or adaptive optimization.\n\nExperience building low-latency models in regulated or financially sensitive environments.\n\nFamiliarity with causal inference, online experimentation and measuring incremental model impact.\n\nExperience developing first-line managers or technical leads within a growing Data Science organization.\n\nHow we work\nThis role is based in London and follows Checkout.com ’s hybrid working model.\nYou will lead colleagues across Europe and Tel Aviv, with occasional travel for team and product planning. You will report to the Senior Director, Product and work closely with leaders across Product, Engineering, Analytics and Commercial within Payment Performance.\nAdditional Information\nBring all of you to work\nWe create the conditions for high performers to thrive, through real ownership, fewer blockers, and work that makes a difference from day one.\nHere, you’ll move fast, take on meaningful challenges, and be recognized for the impact you deliver. It’s a place where ambition gets met with opportunity, and where your growth is in your hands.\nWe work as one team, and we back each other to succeed. So whatever your background or identity, if you’re ready to grow and make a difference, you’ll be right at home here.\nIt’s important we set you up for success and make our process as accessible as possible. So let us know in your application, or tell your recruiter directly, if you need anything to make your experience or working environment more comfortable.\nLife atCheckout.com\nWe understand that work is just one part of your life. Our hybrid working model offers flexibility, with three days per week in the office to support collaboration and connection.\nCurious about what it’s like to be part of our team? Visit ourCareers Page to learn more about our culture, open roles, and what drives us.\nFor a closer look at daily life at Checkout.com, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram","description_format":"text","description_chars":8958,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Payment Processing & Gateways"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-09T15:40:07Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"GB","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"Licensed UK visa sponsor (Skilled Worker, Senior or Specialist Worker)","filings_12m":null,"filings_prev_12m":null,"green_card_filings_12m":null,"median_offered_wage_usd":null,"route":"Skilled Worker; Global Business Mobility: Senior or Specialist Worker","cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-14T06:20:30+00:00","sources":["UK Home Office: register of licensed sponsors (workers)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":4,"expected_fill_days":47,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-14T06:34:16Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/checkout-com-director-data-science-payment-performance","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/checkout-com-director-data-science-payment-performance.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-14T16:23:58Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":20848,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-15T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":51355},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=51355"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcheckout-com-director-data-science-payment-performance"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcheckout-com-director-data-science-payment-performance"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcheckout-com-director-data-science-payment-performance"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/checkout-com-director-data-science-payment-performance\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcheckout-com-director-data-science-payment-performance"}]}