Job Description

We are seeking an experienced Senior Data Scientist to lead fraud risk strategy optimization and entity‑level fraud state estimation across the enterprise. This role is critical to developing a holistic understanding of customer behavior and translating that understanding into intelligent decisioning and colleague decision support across fraud prevention, risk management, and product experiences.

The ideal candidate brings deep fraud domain expertise spanning across the entire customer life cycle, strong analytical rigor, and the courage to challenge existing approaches while delivering practical, scalable solutions under time constraints and scope changes. This individual will partner closely with business leaders, first- and second-line risk teams, fraud operations, and product to drive measurable fraud risk reduction and improved customer outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Discover, Design, develop, and execute fraud risk strategy optimization frameworks, including rule, model, and hybrid decisioning approaches
• Perform entity‑level fraud state estimation across customers, accounts, devices, and networks to enable consistent, enterprise‑wide fraud understanding
• Translate complex fraud signals into actionable insights and decision support for colleagues across business, risk, and operations
• Partner with first- and second-line risk teams to ensure strategies are transparent, explainable, and well‑governed
• Collaborate with operations and product teams to ensure well-defined objective functions which are operationally viable and aligned with customer experience goals
• Communicate findings clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences, influencing decision‑making at multiple levels
• Champion innovation by testing new analytical approaches while maintaining disciplined execution and production readiness

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in fraud analytics, fraud risk management, or financial crime data science
• Strong experience with fraud detection, prevention, and decisioning systems in complex environments
• Demonstrated ability to balance risk reduction, customer experience, and operational efficiency
• Proven track record of independent problem‑solving, ownership, and delivery in ambiguous problem spaces
• Excellent communications (oral and written), interpersonal/business partnering, and organizational skills
• Demonstrates courage, innovation, and high productivity

Technical Skills

• Advanced SQL for data extraction, transformation, and analysis
• Strong Python skills for data analysis, modeling, and pipeline development
• Solid foundation in data science and statistical learning, including:
  • Classification and regression techniques
  • Feature engineering
  • Model evaluation and performance monitoring

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with fraud strategy optimization, challenger testing, or decision policy design
• Familiarity with entity resolution, graph/network analytics, or customer‑centric risk frameworks
• Experience operating within regulated environments and risk governance structures
• Bachelor’s degree in Operations Management, Mathematics, Statistics, Actuarial Sciences, Economics or other quantitative, business or technical discipline
• Master degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Management, Economics or other quantitative, business or technical discipline preferred

Hours & Work Schedule

• Hours per Week: 40
• Work Schedule: 8:00am-5:00pm Monday - Friday

Pay Transparency

The salary range for this position is $105,000 - $130,000 per year. Actual pay is based on various factors including but not limited to the work location, and relevant skills and experience. We offer competitive pay, comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, maternity/paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, education reimbursement, wellness programs and more. Note, Citizens’ paid time off policy exceeds the mandatory, paid sick or paid time-away policy of every local and state jurisdiction in the United States. For an overview of our benefits, visit https://jobs.citizensbank.com/benefits

Equal Employment Opportunity

Citizens, its parent, subsidiaries, and related companies (Citizens) provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all colleagues and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, citizenship, physical or mental disability, perceived disability or history or record of a disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, genetic characteristic, marital or domestic partner status, victim of domestic violence, family status/parenthood, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, pregnancy/childbirth/lactation, colleague’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state and/or local laws. At Citizens, we are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that enables all colleagues to bring their best selves to work every day and everyone is expected to be treated with respect and professionalism. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, performance and capability.

Equal Employment and Opportunity Employer

Job Applicant Data Privacy Policy

Background Check

Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the candidate successfully passing a background check, which may include initial credit, motor vehicle record, public record, prior employment verification, and criminal background checks. Results of the background check are individually reviewed based upon legal requirements imposed by our regulators and with consideration of the nature and gravity of the background history and the job offered. Any offer of employment will include further information.