Kikoff: The Fintech Powering Financial Security at Scale
Kikoff is a profitable, pre-IPO fintech company on a mission to empower everyone to achieve financial security. With record revenue growth in 2025 and a unicorn valuation, we've built a suite of products that help millions of people build credit, access liquidity, and save money. We're scaling fast. Join us if you want to build something meaningful and help millions of people move forward financially. Why Kikoff:
This is a consumer fintech startup, and you will be working with serial entrepreneurs who have built strong consumer brands and innovative products. We value extreme ownership, clear communication, a strong sense of craftsmanship, and the desire to create lasting work and work relationships. Yes, you can build an exciting business AND have real-life real-customer impact. ## In This Role, You Will
Lead and Grow the Team
Manage, coach, and develop a team of 15+ data scientists and engineers, including direct reports who are themselves managing ICs
Own the hiring plan to grow the team to ~25 by end of year, including hiring and developing managers who can each own a sub-domain of the work
Set a high bar for technical rigor, ownership, and business impact across the team
Own the Data Science Strategy
Define and execute the data science roadmap across credit risk, growth, product analytics, and fraud
Own the full ML model lifecycle: scoping, development, validation, deployment, monitoring, and governance
Maintain best practices for experimentation design, causal inference, A/B testing, and statistical analysis across the company
Ensure data science output is production-grade, well-documented, and auditable. ### Drive Business Impact
Translate complex business problems into actionable data science workstreams
Partner with Product, Engineering, Marketing, Risk, and Finance leadership as a peer — not a service function
Present findings and recommendations directly to executive leadership
Own the Data Foundation
Oversee data engineering and internal pipeline work that supports model development and analytics
Partner with Engineering to evolve the data infrastructure as the company scales
Drive data quality, reliability, and governance standards across the organization
You Have
10+ years of experience in data science, applied ML, or product analytics — with substantial time in consumer-facing, data-intensive businesses
7+ years leading data science teams, including direct experience managing managers — you have built an org that does not depend on you for every decision
Demonstrated experience scaling a data team through a growth phase: you have hired managers, and you know how to grow a team without losing quality or culture
Deep technical fluency in ML modeling, statistical inference, causal analysis, and experimentation — you can engage at the model level when it matters
A track record of translating data science work into product and business decisions that moved the needle at the executive level
The ability to make your team better every day: through clarity of goals, honest feedback, and building trust with strong practitioners
Strong command of Python or R, SQL, and modern cloud data platforms
Experience owning model governance and the full model lifecycle in a production environment
Nice to Have
Experience in consumer credit, risk underwriting, or fraud modeling
Familiarity with regulatory and model governance expectations in consumer lending
Experience with BI and data tools such as Metabase, Looker, dbt, Airflow, or Fivetran
Experience managing data engineering teams or working closely with data infrastructure
What We're Like
Scrappy. We move fast and build what we need, not what sounds impressive. We don't cut corners when they matter, and we don't over-engineer when they don't. Risk-oriented. We make tradeoffs deliberately. A mature team knows the difference between a bet worth taking and one that isn't. Data-obsessed. We all look at data, pull it, and believe that understanding the mechanics yields real insight. You will be surrounded by people who think this way. Humble. We know this journey has required timing, circumstance, and the right people showing up. We are grateful, and we don't take it for granted. Base Range
$398,000—$486,000 USD
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Kikoff Inc. We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing equal employment opportunities and considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class. Please reference the following for more information.
