Head of Data Science

iwoca

full-time

Posted on: 12/18/2025

Location Type: Hybrid

Location: London • 🇬🇧 United Kingdom

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💰 £120,000 - £170,000 per year

Lead

About the role

You’ll lead multiple data science teams whose work guides decision-making across lending, product, operations, and strategy.
You'll shape how we work, ensuring that analytical insight directly influences the choices that matter most at iwoca.
You’ll lead a group that focuses on rigorous, interpretable, and commercially useful modelling that is deployed, monitored, and maintained in production.
You'll set direction, shape team structure, and ensure the function’s work is grounded in commercial context and used by decision-makers across iwoca.
You’ll work with the team leads and senior data scientists who coordinate day-to-day work.
You’ll help teams decide where and how to apply their efforts – identifying where modelling adds value and where a lighter heuristic approach could be more effective.
You’ll oversee hiring and development, ensuring assessment, progression, and knowledge-sharing are fair, structured, and suited to a growing multi-team environment.
You’ll represent the function in discussions that shape lending, risk, and product decisions by explaining assumptions, highlighting risks, and helping senior stakeholders act on analytical insight.

Strategic leadership: You have experience setting data science strategy and aligning work with commercial goals. You can translate technical modelling for senior stakeholders, make assumptions explicit, and shape the decisions that follow.
Production experience: You have managed the full lifecycle of models in production – deploying, monitoring, and retiring them. You are comfortable coordinating chains of model dependencies across different teams.
Commercial acumen: You understand how modelling supports business decisions and know when to make trade-offs between depth, delivery time, and value.
Team development: You have a track record of hiring and developing data scientists, and establishing consistent standards for planning, peer review, and methodology.
Technical background: You have a background in probability, statistics, or a related quantitative field such as mathematics or physics and can evaluate analytical work for conceptual soundness.
Experience shaping an R&D or modelling agenda, including probabilistic or long-term forecasting work (Bonus).
Experience in domains such as credit risk, lending, or customer lifetime value (Bonus).
Experience representing a data science function externally (for example, industry events or publications) (Bonus).

Benefits

Flexible working hours.
Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership.
A private GP service (separate from Vitality) for you, your partner, and your dependents.
25 days’ holiday per year, an extra day off for your birthday, the option to buy or sell an additional five days of annual leave, and unlimited unpaid leave.
A one-month, fully paid sabbatical after four years.
Instant access to external counselling and therapy sessions for team members that need emotional or mental health support.
3% Pension contributions on total earnings.
An employee equity incentive scheme.
Generous parental leave and a nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money.
Electric car scheme and cycle to work scheme.
Two company retreats a year: we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain, and further afield.
A learning and development budget for everyone.
Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers.
Access to learning platforms like Treehouse

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

data sciencemodellingprobabilitystatisticsmathematicsphysicsmodel lifecycle managementforecasting

strategic leadershipteam developmentcommercial acumencommunicationdecision-making