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Principal Research Scientist [Risk]

Remote, Worldwide·Added 15 days ago

Plata Card

27 open roles

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Overview

Job details

Fully remote
Per the ad.
A relocation package
Help with the move, per the ad.

Requirements

Have the right to work in Spain
Plata Card doesn't mention sponsorship, but this role may fit the Digital nomad visa.
Work in English
English is required, per the ad.
Have senior-level experience
Staff-level role.
University degree
“Strong mathematical or technical education - degree in mathematics, physics, or CS from a top technical university” — per the ad.

Pay & benefits

What you'll get

Relocation support to one of our hubs - Mexico, Cyprus, Serbia, Spain with assistance for the employee and their family
Flexible work from one of our offices or remote
Healthcare coverage
Education budget: language lessons, professional training and certifications
Wellness budget: mental health and fitness activity reimbursements
Vacation policy: 20 days of annual leave and paid sick leave

Requirements

What we're looking for

Proven experience applying deep learning to sequential data - transformer architectures on event/transaction sequences strongly preferred, but not required.
Strong foundation in mathematical statistics and probability theory.
Deep understanding of machine learning algorithms (GBM, MLP, CNN, RNN, Transformers, etc.)
Experience taking large models to production: distributed training, model serving, latency/cost trade-offs.
Ability to strike a reasonable balance between solution complexity and practical applicability.
Strong mathematical or technical education - degree in mathematics, physics, or CS from a top technical university
Strong communication skills.

Nice to have

Kaggle Competitions Master/Grandmaster or equivalent (a plus); experience developing models in banking or consumer lending (a plus)

The role

What you'll do

You will own our foundation model program end to end - from research direction to models running in production and driving real credit decisions.
Your models directly move the numbers that matter: cost of risk, approval rates, and portfolio NPV across a fast-scaling credit portfolio.
You'll work with one of the richest financial datasets in LATAM billions of transactions and behavioral events across 3M+ customers, growing daily.
Build an end-to-end foundation model over financial event sequences - transactions, credit bureau data, and in-app behavioral events with subsequent fine-tuning for downstream business tasks: underwriting (PD), credit limit strategy, fraud detection, collections, and propensity models.
Drive technical decisions end-to-end: methodology → implementation → performance and latency → robustness, interpretability, and regulatory compliance.
Take models from research to production: training infrastructure, evaluation frameworks, model serving, latency/cost optimization, and monitoring.
Research state-of-the-art approaches in the industry, publish your own work, and speak at leading conferences.
Mentor senior engineers and scientists; own technical standards for model development across the team (design reviews, evaluation methodology, deployment practices).
Communicate results clearly to cross-functional stakeholders: product, risk, business, and leadership.

About Plata Card

Plata Card is a Mexican fintech company that provides digital payment and credit solutions, primarily through a mobile app and a physical card. The company focuses on financial inclusion, offering credit products to underserved segments in Mexico. It operates with a technology-driven approach, building its own software and data infrastructure to manage risk, customer support, and product development.

In Spain, Plata Card has established a significant technology and operations hub in Madrid, where it hires for roles in engineering, data, risk, and IT support. The company's culture emphasizes automation, data-driven decision-making, and agile development. For international professionals, the Madrid office offers opportunities to work in a fast-growing fintech with a Latin American focus, often requiring Spanish language skills but also valuing diverse technical expertise.

Founded: 2018
Employees: 500–1,000
Headquarters: Mexico City, Mexico
In Spain: Madrid
Website: platacard.mx

Good to know if you are moving

Plata Card's Madrid office is a key technology hub, offering roles in engineering, data, and IT, which may provide opportunities for international professionals to work in a Spanish-speaking environment.
The company focuses on financial inclusion, which can be appealing for professionals interested in impactful fintech work.
Many roles require proficiency in Spanish, but some technical positions may be open to English speakers, depending on the team.
The company uses modern tech stacks like Golang and cloud-based data warehousing, offering exposure to current technologies.
As a growing fintech, there may be opportunities for career advancement and taking on significant responsibilities early on.

In their own words

About the company & team

Plata is one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in the world. In just 3 years, we've grown to 3M+ customers and reached a $5B+ valuation. We're now strengthening our Risk & Decisioning core team and are looking for a Principal AI Engineer to set the technical bar and build best-in-class, production-grade models that materially move business metrics.

Innovative Spirit: a commitment to creativity and groundbreaking solutions
Honest Feedback: valuing open, transparent communication
Supportive Team: a strong, collaborative community
Celebrating Achievements: recognizing our wins together
High-Tech Environment: a team full of smart and revolutionary people who date to challenge the status quo of incumbent finances

All open roles at Plata Card