Manager, Data Science

The Company

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. 

We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers.

We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards.  Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade. 

Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day.  We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Summary:

What you need to know about the role:

As Manager, Data Science in the Fraud Risk team, you will lead new projects to build and improve risk strategies using both PayPal’s proprietary Risk tooling and custom AI/ML models. You will partner closely with Business Units to align on their strategic priorities, educate partners about core risk‐management principles, and collaboratively optimize risk treatments and experiences across our products.

Meet our team:

PayPal’s Global Fraud Prevention organization (GFP) is at the forefront of safeguarding PayPal’s platform, driving automated and adaptive decision-making and risk management through data and cutting-edge tools. GFP teams mitigate fraud while designing seamless, secure experiences for our hundreds of millions of customers. You’ll join a dynamic, mission-driven analytics team that develops and deploys models to detect identity fraud and other sophisticated threats, builds real-time scoring systems for millions of transactions, and collaborates closely with product, engineering, compliance, and operations to translate insights into policy improvements and better customer journeys.

Working here means being part of a dedicated, cross-functional team of Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Product Owners, and Risk Operations leads, all united by the goal of keeping PayPal both resilient and customer-obsessed.This is a Dublin-based role. Please note that you will need to have the appropriate right-to-work, and no relocation costs will be provided for this role.

Job Description:

Your Way to Impact

In this role, you will own an end-to-end portfolio of PayPal products or markets, driving accountability for loss and decline rates while managing a small team of Data Scientists (3–6). You’ll collaborate with multiple stakeholders to design holistic fraud-prevention strategies, from initial data exploration through model deployment and performance monitoring. By striking a balance between speed and quality, you’ll ensure that our fraud-risk function makes a meaningful contribution to business growth, meeting key KPIs such as authentication rate targets and overall loss-rate objectives.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities

• Portfolio Ownership: Lead a group of Data Scientists to manage fraud and loss metrics for assigned product lines or markets.

• Strategy Development: Collaborate cross-functionally to develop and iterate on fraud-prevention frameworks that optimize transaction declines and minimize customer friction.

• Model Lifecycle Management: Guide the team in data preparation, feature engineering, model training, and validation—leveraging Python/R and cloud-native platforms (e.g., BigQuery, Snowflake).

• Stakeholder Alignment: Host regular syncs with Business Units, Risk Operations, and Compliance to ensure models and business rules remain aligned with evolving policy and regulatory requirements.

• Performance Monitoring: Track model health (drift, false-positive/false-negative rates) and lead root-cause analyses for any anomalies or spikes in loss.

What You’ll Bring

• 8+ years of relevant experience working with large-scale, complex datasets, including at least 3 years managing a team of 3–6 Data Scientists in a fraud-risk or financial-services environment.

• Proven ability to decompose ambiguous business requirements into a structured analytic plan and deliver data-driven recommendations.

• Advanced proficiency in SQL and Python (or R) for data wrangling, EDA, and model development.

• Expertise in exploratory data analysis and preparing clean, structured datasets for modelling

• Hands-on experience applying supervised and unsupervised learning techniques (regression, classification, clustering, decision trees, anomaly detection).

• Familiarity with production ML frameworks (scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch) and cloud data platforms (BigQuery, Snowflake).

• Deep understanding of fraud-risk principles, including AML/KYC, regulatory compliance, and performance metrics (Precision, Recall, ROC-AUC).

• Strong track record of partnering with engineers, product managers, and business leaders.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, able to distill complex findings into clear narratives for both technical and non-technical audiences.

• A passion for inventing new approaches to big, ambiguous problems—always looking to build novel solutions that stay ahead of evolving threat vectors.

Preferred Qualification:

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in-person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our Benefits:

At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset—you. That’s why we offer benefits to help you thrive in every stage of life. We champion your financial, physical, and mental health by offering valuable benefits and resources to help you care for the whole you.

We have great benefits including a flexible work environment, employee shares options, health and life insurance and more. To learn more about our benefits please visit https://www.paypalbenefits.com.

Who We Are:

Click Here to learn more about our culture and community.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion 

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.  In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.  If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at talentaccommodations@paypal.com.  

Belonging at PayPal: 

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.

Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.