Principal Data Scientist

Forward Financing is a financial technology company based in Boston, Massachusetts with team members throughout the United States, Dominican Republic, and Canada. The company is on a mission to unlock the capital that fuels small businesses across America. Recognized as a Best Place to Work by Built In Boston and certified as a Great Place To Work®, Forward is investing in its employees, technology, and customer experience – with long-term success in mind every step of the way.

We are seeking a Principal Data Scientist to set the technical vision for data science at Forward Financing and drive our highest-impact, most ambiguous initiatives from concept to production. As the most senior individual contributor on the team, you will shape the multi-year data science roadmap, define how models are built and deployed across the organization, and serve as a trusted technical advisor to senior leadership.

You will operate at the intersection of deep technical execution and strategic business partnership, delivering advanced analytical solutions with measurable impact across all business domains.

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of the company's most complex and highest-stakes statistical and machine learning models, particularly in ambiguous problem spaces with no established playbook

• Drive end-to-end delivery of flagship data science initiatives, from problem framing and model design through deployment, monitoring, and ongoing iteration

• Lead the technical strategy and architecture for Forward's modeling ecosystem, including credit risk, pricing and loss forecasting, ensuring solutions are built for long-term scalability and business impact

• Partner with senior leaders across Portfolio Strategy, Engineering, Product, Underwriting, Sales, and Collections to shape the data science roadmap, proactively identify high-value opportunities, and influence business strategy with data

• Define and enforce organization-wide standards for model development, validation, code quality, and documentation; serve as the technical authority on design decisions

• Mentor data scientists at all levels, including senior and lead team members, raising the technical bar and fostering a culture of rigorous, continuous learning

• Communicate complex technical concepts, tradeoffs, and business implications to executives and non-technical stakeholders, and represent data science in strategic planning

• Architect and evolve production machine learning pipelines and monitoring frameworks to ensure models are reliable, scalable, and continuously improving

• Mission driven company:
  Forward is a trusted source of fast, flexible funding for small businesses that have often been underserved by traditional financing options. When you join the team, you will help ensure all small businesses have access to the financial support they need to succeed.

• Flexibility is a top priority:
  Our employees are empowered to choose where they want to work (whether that’s from home, in the office, or a combination of both) with flexible hours.

• Deep experience in building and deploying credit risk models, especially underwriting models, in the fintech, lending or financial services industry

• 10+ years of hands‑on model development and deployment experience using advanced statistical and machine learning techniques such as generalized linear models, gradient boosting and deep learning

• Proven track record of leading high-impact data science initiatives from ambiguity to production, with demonstrated business results

• Experience with real‑time models, decisioning engines, and production‑grade machine learning pipelines is preferred.

• Expert in Python, SQL and Git

• Experience designing, deploying models…