Principal Data Scientist - M-Pesa Africa at Vodafone Global Enterprise

Role purpose:

M-Pesa is a pioneering fintech business and global market leader in mobile money. From starting in 2007 as a convenient means by which the unbanked and underbanked can make digital payments, M-Pesa has now grown to offer >50 million active customers financial services, enterprise, merchant and retail solutions. We are proud of our work in enabling the digital economy in our markets, and in driving financial inclusion. 

The Commercial Team works with the M-Pesa leadership across our 7 OpCos to co-create the product strategy, drive thought leadership and new strategic partnerships, design new products and features, set commercial priorities with the engineering teams and support the product development lifecycle.

Your responsibilities will include championing big data, artificial intelligence and ma,chine learning to help build the next generation of M-Pesa services that are personalized, contextualized, and smart. This could include work across the M-Pesa Africa product suite, including the consumer and merchant app experience, the financial services portfolio, international remittances and the business portal.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Create Machine Learning and AI products that provide actionable business insight and drive personalization for M-Pesa users.
• Developing predictive models with large and varied datasets, working with a community of colleagues across Advanced Analytics, technology, and data and customer functions
• Development of machine learning models for various areas of the business on the Big Data Platform
• Development of prototype code in e.g. PySpark for automated training and scoring of the machine learning models
• Machine Learning Model performance tracking and reporting using e.g. Qlik
• Uses data visualisation to engage audience in a compelling way, enabling effective storytelling
• Work with Big Data and AI lead to deliver key packages of work to meet the needs of business customers
• Works in partnership with Big Data Engineering for data ingestion to support use cases
• Works in partnership with Big Data Production Data Engineering for model automation and productionising
• Contributing to the wider community to enable Machine Learning and AI capability across Vodafone globally.
• Be the technical SME for all Artificial Intelligence use cases deployed
• Drive and own research and development within the M-Pesa Big Data and AI team

The ideal candidate for this role will have:

Must have technical/professional qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in quantitative fields like Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, Computer Science Engineering, Artificial Intelligence or related fields (essential)
• Professional and/or academic experience in Big Data analytics & deployment of models and algorithms to solve real-world problems (with deep statistical and  machine learning modelling expertise)
• Familiarity with fintech and transactional data will be advantageous 
• Experience in data manipulation: use of structured data tools (e.g., SQL), and platforms (e.g., Spark, NoSQL)
• Proficiency in at least one relevant programming language: Python, R
• Experience in major machine learning modelling libraries (e.g., Pyspark, PyG) and deep learning techniques 
• Experience working with graph algorithms
• A minimum of 8 years relevant experience in Data Science.
• Experience leading and managing a team of data scientists and other stakeholders.
• Strong understanding and proficiency in machine learning, with the ability to apply it to real-world problems.
• Experience with big data technologies and platforms, such as Spark, and AWS.
• Strong expertise in data manipulation, analysis, and visualization, with the ability to extract insights from large and complex datasets.
• Experience in model deployment and productionalization.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to present and explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to think strategically and make data-driven decisions.
• A proven track record of delivering data science projects, with the ability to lead projects from start to finish.
• Continuously seeking to improve and develop new skills and stay current with the latest technologies and trends in data science

Closing date for Applications: 09 February 2023.