The Organization

Small businesses uplift communities and anchor local economies, while creating opportunities for themselves, their families, their employees, and our neighborhoods. Yet entrepreneurs who are people of color, women, and immigrants often struggle to secure capital and resources, as they are systematically shut out from traditional financing. 

Accion Opportunity Fund is an unparalleled financial support system that provides these small business owners with access to capital, networks, and coaching. We work to build inclusive and accessible options for these determined business owners. For over 25 years we have served a client base that is nearly 90% women, people of color, or immigrants. 

In addition to providing resources and loans to small businesses, we also conduct original research, advocate for policy changes, and finance community construction projects in low-income neighborhoods through our New Markets Tax Credit program.

Together, we are building a diverse, vibrant community where opportunity, knowledge, and access to capital are within reach.

For more information about us, visit https://aofund.org/

The Role

Report to the Senior Director, Analytics and Business Intelligence, we are looking for a talented, enthusiastic, and results-driven Senior Analytics Data Scientist to join our growing team of analytics experts who will be responsible for responding to analytics requests, managing data assets, developing predictive and forecasting analytics solutions in support of the organization’s lending decisioning across all aspects of Growth, Marketing, Sales, Product, Credit, Operations and Finance.

The ideal candidate should have strong academic background in predictive modelling, have great sense of data, be experienced in data mining and predictive solutions development for lending and financial services industry, with particularly deep expertise in scorecard development and scorecard lifecycle management, spanning inception, data preparation, development, validation, strategy design, implementation, and monitoring. The candidate is experienced at gathering, incorporating, and integrating business knowledge and expertise from Risk, Product, Operations, IT, and Compliance managers for the solutions design and development. The candidate is an avid and quick learner of new concepts, skills, and technologies, with strong ability to productionalize basic and advanced analytic solutions.

Accion Opportunity Fund has an analytics environment that encourages openness of discussion, knowledge exchange, constant learning, and pursuit of intellectual curiosity. We encourage analytics development based on deep understanding of the intricacies of the evolving customer segments, loan product lines and their life cycle, and build advanced analytics solutions that drive business decisions, actions, and results.

Key Responsibilities/ Accountabilities

• Design and develop application and account behavior scorecards and predictive models for acquisition and account risk management.  Develop scorecards and predictive model’s lifecycle management infrastructure including solutions design, data preparation, development, validation, strategy design, implementation, and monitoring.
• Drive actionable analytics insights development for continuous enhancement of lending business management in all aspects of credit risk, policy and strategy, marketing and sales, account behavior and collections.
• Develop credit loss forecasting infrastructures through credit risk modeling, loss forecasting, and incorporation of accounting standards for portfolio lifetime loss and regulatory compliance management.
• Develop monitoring and reporting infrastructure for analytics solutions tracking, validation, fine tuning, and redevelopment lifecycle management.
• Work with Risk, Product, Operations, Finance, IT, and Compliance managers for gathering, incorporating, and integrating business knowledge and expertise in designing and developing analytics solutions.
• Serve as an expert consultant to senior management on highly complex issues.
• Work with the executive team to match communications strategies with organizational strategies and objectives.
• Learn and understand the business in detail and educate the organization in the use and understanding of analytics and data.
• Perform other analytics, machine learning or data mining duties using basic to advanced approaches. Handle complex solutions delivery initiatives. 

The Person

Highly qualified candidates will share Opportunity Fund’s commitment to its mission and will embody the organization’s core values bringing a broad range of skills and experience including, but not limited to:

• 5+ years of experience. Highly skilled in data processing, scorecard, and predictive model development with strong analytical, conceptual, and quantitative problem-solving skills.
• Bachelors, Master or Ph.D. Degree, preferably in a quantitative area such as statistics, mathematics, computer science, engineering, and economics.
• Knowledge of the lending business with knowledge of small business lending a plus.
• Knowledge of external credit/alternative data for assessing credit outcomes a plus.
• Knowledge and experience of new accounting and regulatory rules (e.g. CECL) a plus.
• Sound project management skills.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills.
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent and competing priorities.
• Ability to identify key issues, resolving and communicating the issues cross-functionally.
• Proficiency with SQL. Highly skilled in at least one of the following: Python, SAS, or R.

Perks & Benefits

Our mission is what motivates us to come to work each day. We know that happy employees are productive employees, which is why we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes:

• Competitive salary commensurate with experience.
• An environment that values work-life balance.
• 100% company-funded Medical, Dental, Vision, Life & Disability coverage for employees (Based upon your plan selection). 90% company-funded dependent coverage (Based upon your plan selection).
• Voluntary benefits with payroll deduction for Supplemental Life & AD&D insurance and Legal plans.
• Tax deferred & Roth 403(b) Retirement Plan with employer match. Employer match increases with tenure.
• Paid vacation days (increased with tenure), 13 paid holidays, 1 floating holiday and 10 Sick days, and family leave days per year.
• This is a fully remote (work from home) position.