Lead Machine Learning Scientist, Search

Monzo

🚀 We’re on a mission to make money work for everyone. We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking. After starting as a prepaid card, our product offering has grown a lot in the last 10 years in the UK. As well as personal and business bank accounts, we offer joint accounts, accounts for 16-17 year olds, a free kids account and credit cards in the UK, with more exciting things to come beyond. Our UK customers can also save, invest and combine their pensions with us.  With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers! We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo ❤️ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   📍London/Cardiff/UK Remote | 💰 £115,000 - £150,000 + Incentive Awards tied to your performance + Benefits  ✨ ABOUT OUR MACHINE LEARNING FINCRIME TEAM: Our Financial Crime Data team consists of over 25 people across 4 data specialisms: Analytics Engineers, Data Analysts, Machine Learning Scientists and Data Scientists. As a Lead Machine Learning Scientist, you’ll be working in a fast moving environment, building and iterating on our financial crime defensive capabilities to ensure we keep Monzo and our customers safe. Our financial crime team has a large impact on Monzo’s bottom line as fraud and scams are usually some of the largest cost line items in a bank's P&L. We have a major influence on the overall customer experience and it’s our duty to keep our customers safe. The work we do results in directly measurable customer or company benefit, which is incredibly satisfying. Our Machine Learning Scientists work on a range of problems within the different financial crime areas ranging from fraud detection and prevention, transaction monitoring for different types of suspicious activity through to customer risk assessment and operational tooling. WHAT YOU’LL BE WORKING ON: A Lead Machine Learning Scientist at Monzo is a technical Individual Contributor (IC) leadership position. As a technical Machine Learning expert, working with billions of rows of data stored on a modern cloud native data platform, we’ll be expecting you to leverage your deep experience of developing and deploying advanced Machine Learning models to: * Automatically and accurately detect suspicious user behaviours while minimising impact to genuine customers and operational costs * Adapt quickly and appropriately to changing fraud and financial crime trends, ensuring our detection systems remain performant through time. The technical approaches you take to help solve these problems will be very much in your hands and we’ll strongly encourage and support experimentation and innovation. We’ll be expecting you to justify and demonstrate effectiveness along the way, making sure the approach meets our business and customer needs. YOUR DAY-TO-DAY: As a technical individual contributor, you’ll be providing technical leadership and shipping highly impactful ML-based solutions. You’ll be embedded in a cross functional product squad, working closely with product managers, data scientists, backend engineers and designers in an agile environment. You’ll also be a technical leader within the Machine Learning discipline, helping to steer technical work and drive up standards. This will involve: * Working with stakeholders across the organization to identify and scope out the most impactful opportunities to tackle Financial Crime and Fraud with Machine Learning. * Leading the design and development of advanced real time Machine Learning models, for example exploring how neural network, graph-based, and sequence-based architectures can drive improvements in detection of financial crime. * Providing technical leadership to drive up levels of technical expertise and best practice across the Machine Learning discipline, leading by example and mentoring others. * Working closely with our MLOps team to steer the ongoing development of tools to enable rapid iteration of models and optimisations of the full ML model lifecycle. YOU SHOULD APPLY IF: What we’re doing here at Monzo excites you! * You have a multiple year track record of excellence leading the development and deployment of advanced Machine Learning models to tackle real business problems preferably in a fast moving tech company * You have experience developing and shipping deep learning, graph-based, and/or sequence-based ML architectures to production and delivering business impact * You're impact driven and excited to own the end to end journey that starts with a business problem and ends with your solution having a measurable impact in production * You have a self-starter mindset; you proactively identify issues and opportunities and tackle them without being told to do so * Reducing financial crime and protecting customers with data driven strategies sounds exciting to you * You have extensive experience writing production Python code and a strong command of SQL. You are comfortable using them every day, and keen to learn Go lang which is used in many of our backend microservices * You’re comfortable working in a team that deals with ambiguity and have experience helping your team and stakeholders resolve that ambiguity * You want to be involved in building a product that you (and the people you know) use every day * You have a product mindset: you care about customer outcomes and you want to make data-informed decisions * You're excited about fast-moving developments in Machine Learning and can communicate those ideas to colleagues who are not familiar with the domain * You’re adaptable, curious and enjoy learning new technologies and ideas NICE TO HAVES: * Experience working with financial crime and in regulated institutions * Commercial experience writing critical production code and working with microservices THE INTERVIEW PROCESS: Our interview process involves 3 main stages. We promise not to ask you any brain teasers or trick questions! * 30 minute recruiter call * 45 minute call with hiring manager * 60 minute ML Modelling interview * 60 minute Product & ML interview * 60 minute behavioural interview Our average process takes around 3-4 weeks but we will always work around your availability. You will have the chance to speak to our recruitment team at various points during your process but if you do have any specific questions ahead of this please contact us on tech-hiring@monzo.com. Please also use that email to let us know if there's anything we can do to make your application process easier for you, because of disability, neurodiversity or any other personal reason. What’s in it for you: ✈️ We can help you relocate to the UK ✅ We can sponsor visas 📍This role can be based in our London office, but we're open to distributed working within the UK (with ad hoc meetings in London). ⏰ We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team. 📚Learning budget of £1,000 a year for training courses and conferences ➕And much more, see our full list of benefits here If you prefer to work part-time, we'll make this happen whenever we can - whether this is to help you meet other commitments or strike a great work-life balance #LI-REMOTE #LI-SR1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equal opportunities for everyone Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, 2026 Diversity and Inclusion Report and 2025 Gender Pay Gap Report. We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status. If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage 😊

Monzo

🚀 We’re on a mission to make money work for everyone. We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking. After starting as a prepaid card, our product offering has grown a lot in the last 10 years in the UK. As well as personal and business bank accounts, we offer joint accounts, accounts for 16-17 year olds, a free kids account and credit cards in the UK, with more exciting things to come beyond. Our UK customers can also save, invest and combine their pensions with us.  With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers! We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo ❤️ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   📍London/Cardiff/UK Remote | 💰£113,200 - £145,200 + equity + Incentive Awards tied to your performance + Benefits  ✨ Our Operations Machine Learning team ⭐ We’re building the machine learning and optimisation systems that help Monzo provide fast, efficient and resilient customer support at scale. You’ll lead Machine Learning for our Workforce Management vertical: the organisation that makes sure Monzo has the right human support supply to meet customer demand. The team works on demand forecasting, real-time supply <> demand matching, problem routing and escalation, and predictive models that help us understand how long work will take, what might become late, and where the next best human support should be assigned. This is a great role for someone who is still close to technical work. You might be a Tech Lead, Team Lead, Senior Machine Learning Scientist or Senior Machine Learning Engineer who has recently been building models and systems yourself, and is excited to grow into a broader leadership role. Not everything here is about LLMs. You’ll work on rigorous ML, forecasting, optimisation and operations research problems where quantitative thinking, pragmatic delivery and strong product judgement really matter. You’ll lead a growing team of Machine Learning Scientists, embedded in product squads working alongside data scientists, backend, mobile and web engineers, product managers, user researchers, designers and operations specialists. 🔑You’ll play a key role by… * Shaping the ML strategy for Workforce Management, helping us decide where ML, forecasting and optimisation can have the biggest impact for customers and human agents. * Leading the design, build and delivery of production ML systems across forecasting, routing, assignment, escalation and time-to-completion prediction. * Staying close to the technical details: helping the team frame problems well, choose the right modelling approach, define robust validation, review trade-offs and ship safely. * Working with Product, Engineering, Data and Operations leaders to turn ambiguous operational problems into pragmatic, iterative ML systems that improve real customer outcomes. * Coaching and developing Machine Learning Scientists through regular 1:1s, feedback and technical guidance. * Creating healthy ways of working for the team: clear priorities, strong technical standards, good documentation, sensible monitoring, and space for people to do their best work. * Contributing to the wider Machine Learning discipline at Monzo, helping us scale how we build, ship and operate ML systems in production. 🤩 We’d love to hear from you if… * You’ve recently worked as a hands-on Machine Learning practitioner, for example as a Senior IC, Tech Lead, Team Lead or ML manager. * You have strong foundations in ML, statistics, forecasting, optimisation or operations research, and enjoy applying them to messy real-world problems. * You’ve built, shipped or owned ML systems in production, and understand what it takes to make models useful, reliable, monitored and safe. * You can move between technical detail and business context, explaining complex ML ideas clearly to technical and non-technical people. * Coaching others is something you enjoy and take seriously. You may already have people management experience, but we’re also open to people taking their first formal step into management. * Ambiguous problem spaces energise you. The right answer might involve a model, an algorithm, a product change, an operational process, or a combination of all four. * Customer outcomes matter to you, and you want to build systems that help people get answers to their problems quickly and efficiently. * You’re adaptable, curious and excited by quantitative problems. Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! Studies show that women and people of colour might hesitate to apply unless they meet every single requirement. At Monzo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming team. If you’re passionate about this role and keen to learn and grow with us, we encourage you to apply— even if you don’t have everything that's listed just yet. Drop us your application, we’d love to hear from you! 🙌 What’s in it for you 💰 £113,200 - £145,200 ➕Incentive Awards tied to your performance. ✈️ We’ll help you relocate to the UK. ✅ We can sponsor your visa.  📍This role can be based in our London office, but we're open to distributed working within the UK (with ad hoc meetings in London)  ⏰ We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, and at times that suit you and your team.  📚 £1,000 learning budget each year to use on books, training courses and conferences. 🏡 We will set you up to work from home; all employees are given Macbooks and for fully remote workers we will provide extra support for your work-from-home setup.  ➕ Plus lots more! Read our full list of benefits. 🌈 The application journey has 3 key steps * Recruiter Call * Initial Call * Full Loop: ML Modelling Skills Interview, Product & ML interview, Project Deep Dive Interview, Leadership interview This process should take around 3-4 weeks - your schedule is really important to us, so we promise to be as flexible as possible!  We have some guidelines on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ace an application and interview at Monzo. You can read them here. #LI-REMOTE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equal opportunities for everyone Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, 2026 Diversity and Inclusion Report and 2025 Gender Pay Gap Report. We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status. If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage 😊

Monzo

🚀 We’re on a mission to make money work for everyone. We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking. After starting as a prepaid card, our product offering has grown a lot in the last 10 years in the UK. As well as personal and business bank accounts, we offer joint accounts, accounts for 16-17 year olds, a free kids account and credit cards in the UK, with more exciting things to come beyond. Our UK customers can also save, invest and combine their pensions with us.  With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers! We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo ❤️ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   📍London/Cardiff/UK Remote | 💰 £113,200 - £153,200 + Incentive Awards tied to your performance + Benefits  ✨ Our Financial Crime and Fraud Team ⭐ Financial crime causes real harm. In Fraud, we build controls that help protect customers from scams, stolen-card fraud, account takeover and other fast-changing threats, all while keeping Monzo smooth and fair for the millions of people who use us every day. Machine Learning is central to that work. Our ML specialists build, ship and improve models that help us spot risk, make better decisions, and keep our customers safe. We work closely with Product, Risk Partners, Engineering, Data and other disciplines to turn ambiguous fraud problems into reliable controls that make a measurable difference for customers. We’re looking for a Machine Learning Manager to lead ML specialists across different levels of seniority in the Fraud group. You’ll report to the Senior ML Manager for the FinCrime Collective, and you’ll help the team deliver high-impact ML systems while growing a healthy, inclusive and high-performing team. 🔑 You’ll play a key role by… * Managing, coaching and developing a team of Machine Learning specialists, helping them do the best work of their careers through regular 1:1s, clear feedback and thoughtful development plans. * Helping the Fraud group focus ML effort on the highest-impact problems, balancing customer protection, regulatory expectations, operational impact and delivery pace. * Partnering with PMs, Risk Partners, Engineering Managers, Data Managers and senior ML/Data colleagues to shape roadmaps, unblock delivery and make clear trade-offs. * Creating the conditions for high-quality ML delivery: reliable model development, deployment, monitoring, governance, documentation and ownership across the full model lifecycle. * Holding a high bar for ML excellence in Fraud, including model performance, explainability, reproducibility, observability and safe operation in production. * Making sure ML products are owned, maintained and improved over time, rather than treated as one-off projects. * Building a strong team culture where people give and receive useful feedback, learn from each other, and work well with cross-functional partners. * Contributing to the wider Machine Learning and Data discipline at Monzo, including hiring, improving ways of working, and sharing patterns that help other teams move faster and more safely. 🤩 We’d love to hear from you if… * You’ve managed Machine Learning specialists and have delivered through others and want to move further into people management. * You have strong ML judgement and can guide teams through the full model lifecycle, from problem framing and feature/model development through to deployment, monitoring, governance and iteration. * You’re comfortable working in ambiguous, high-impact problem spaces where there often isn’t one “right” answer. * You can build trusted relationships with Product, Risk, Engineering, Data and senior stakeholders, and you know how to bring the right people into the right conversations early. * You focus on outcomes over process, and can help a team prioritise work that protects customers and moves the business forward. * You know what good looks like for production ML systems, and you can raise the bar through coaching, review, standards and pragmatic decision-making. * You communicate clearly with technical and non-technical audiences, especially when explaining trade-offs, risks and recommendations. * You care deeply about building inclusive teams where people with different levels of experience can grow, challenge each other, and do high-quality work sustainably. Experience in fraud, financial crime, risk, regulated environments or customer protection would be a bonus, but it’s not the only way to be successful here. We’re most interested in your ability to lead ML work that has real-world impact. Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! Studies show that women and people of colour might hesitate to apply unless they meet every single requirement. At Monzo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming team. If you’re passionate about this role and keen to learn and grow with us, we encourage you to apply, even if you don’t have everything that's listed just yet. Drop us your application, we’d love to hear from you! 🙌 What’s in it for you 💰 £113,200 - £153,200 + Incentive Awards tied to your performance. ✈️ We can help you relocate to the UK. ✅ We can sponsor your visa. 📍This role can be based in our London office, but we're open to distributed working within the UK, with ad hoc meetings in London. ⏰ We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team. 📚 £1,000 learning budget each year to use on books, training courses and conferences. 🏡 We’ll set you up to work from home; all employees are given MacBooks and for fully remote workers we’ll provide extra support for your work-from-home setup. ➕ Plus lots more! Read our full list of benefits. 🌈 The application journey has 3 key steps * Recruiter call * Initial interview with ML/Data leadership, focused on your people leadership, ML judgement and delivery experience. * Loop stage, likely covering team and stakeholder leadership, technical ML judgement, and Monzo behaviours. This process should take around 3-4 weeks - your schedule is really important to us, so we promise to be as flexible as possible!  We have some guidelines on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ace an application and interview at Monzo. You can read them here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Equal opportunities for everyone Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, 2026 Diversity and Inclusion Report and 2025 Gender Pay Gap Report. We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status. If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage 😊