Senior Data Scientist - Risk Analytics (Contract, São Paulo)

First Help Financial (FHF) is a fast-growing and culturally diverse company in the U.S. We provide auto loans to the underserved and care for our customers and partners with exceptional service. Through flexible financing options and tri-lingual support, we offer consumers an easier way to finance their first car. We lend to and support our portfolio which has consistently grown 30%+ each year over the last nine years.

Here you will find hard-working colleagues who come from over 20 countries. We hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism but also enjoy our work. Our culture and benefits are geared towards making you successful in life and comfortable at work.

Your Title: Senior Associate, Risk Data Science.

Your Location: Hybrid/Brazil HQ address - Nações Unidas 12901 - São Paulo - SP (this role requires ONE day per week in the office on a rotating schedule, plus an additional day in the office each month.)

You Report To: Associate Director, Risk Data Science.

Learn more about our awesome Analytics Team.

About the Opportunity:

First Help Financial, recently voted as a "Great Place to Work" for the fifth year in a row is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer to join our highly skilled and innovative team. First Help Financial is embarking on a new growth phase involving multiple game-changing projects.

What you will do:

• Design, develop, validate, and continuously enhance end‑to‑end risk models and scorecards across the credit lifecycle, including Originations, Pricing, Loss Forecasting, Servicing, and Collections.

• Partner closely with Risk, Finance, Product, and Operations teams to translate business problems into analytical solutions that drive measurable outcomes.

• Evaluate and integrate new data sources, features, and modeling approaches, assessing their incremental value, robustness, and impact on risk and profitability.

• Lead what‑if, stress testing, and scenario analyses to support strategic initiatives, new programs, and policy changes.

• Ensure models are interpretable, stable, and production‑ready, balancing predictive power with regulatory and operational constraints.

• Own the ongoing monitoring and performance tracking of models, identifying degradation, bias, or drift and proactively proposing improvements.

• Stay current on regulatory expectations and industry best practices in credit risk modeling, particularly within the auto finance space, and incorporate them into modeling standards and documentation.

What you bring:

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or a related quantitative field (Master’s or PhD is a plus).

• 5+ years of hands‑on experience building and deploying predictive models in a production environment, preferably within credit risk, lending, or financial services.

• Proven experience developing scorecards and statistical models using techniques such as logistic and linear regression, tree‑based methods, ensemble models, time series, survival analysis, clustering, and/or machine learning methods.

• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL, with the ability to manipulate, analyze, and extract insights from large, complex, and imperfect datasets.

• Solid understanding of the full model lifecycle — from data exploration and feature engineering to validation, monitoring, and retraining.

• Ability to communicate complex analytical findings clearly and confidently to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

• A pragmatic mindset: you know when to optimize for accuracy, explainability, speed, or compliance — and how to make trade‑offs responsibly.

FHF Benefits:

• Great Perks – We offer generous salaries, social activities, monthly lunches, and a robust employee recognition and talent development program to enhance your career with us.
• Culture - We are believers in maintaining a healthy work-life balance. While we work hard and care deeply about our customers and partners, we want you to have room for your family, friends, and yourself.
• Growth - Company growth provides unprecedented career growth. FHF’s extraordinary year over year growth in revenue and new markets provides opportunity for you to establish and develop your career growth. We engage each employee to build a career plan that benefits everyone, and we have a proven record of investing in you.

Diversity and Inclusion

FHF is committed to building a culture that respects and embraces all walks of life, inclusive of all genders, race, culture, age, sexual orientation, and other identities. We will make accommodations when interviewing anyone with special needs.