Data Science Lead- Optimization

Position Overview

Citizens’ Enterprise Data & Analytics (ED&A) organization is seeking a Lead Data Scientist with strong analytical and algorithmic skills to optimize interest rates, portfolio outcomes, and acquisition strategies. In this role, you will work on innovative decision support systems and collaborate with teams in Finance, Pricing & Profitability, Product, Data, and Technology Services. At Citizens, you’ll experience a customer-centric culture that supports career growth and community engagement.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build advanced decision support systems that facilitate robust scenario planning for business decisions, including constrained optimization for deposit interest rates, portfolio outcomes, and acquisition strategies.
• Serve as the lead modeler for machine learning models and analytic products, managing projects from design and development through deployment and integration.
• Develop collaborative relationships with data scientists and cross-functional partners to deliver transformational optimization capabilities.
• Invest in deepening your understanding of business decision frameworks, operational processes, and data to craft practicable solutions.

Required Qualifications

• Master’s degree in operations research, computer science, mathematics, statistics, economics, or a related quantitative field with 8+ years of experience delivering quantitative decision tools for business applications (or PhD with 5+ years of experience).
• Proven experience transforming ambiguous business problems and raw data into rigorous analytic solutions by applying advanced technical and statistical programming techniques.
• Proficiency in Python with 5+ years of applied experience.
• Experience with one or more optimization modeling packages and solvers (e.g. CPLEX, SCIP, Pyomo, SciPy).
• A deep understanding of various statistical and machine learning methods and algorithms, including optimization under uncertainty, forecasting, time series analysis, and Bayesian methods.
• Excellent communication skills to effectively engage both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong leadership and team management skills with the ability to lead direct reports and multi-team projects.
• Experience with cloud computing platforms (preferably AWS) and ML-related services such as Amazon Sagemaker.
• A strong sense of intellectual curiosity and the ability to thrive in an entrepreneurial working environment.
• Commitment to intellectual rigor, compliance, and data privacy controls.
• A disciplined approach to decision-making and setting realistic expectations.
• Experience working with large datasets (greater than 1 million records).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with financial datasets.

Benefits & Perks

• Competitive Compensation discussed during recruitment.
• Supportive and collaborative work environment.
• Access to training, tools, and career growth opportunities.
• Community engagement and an inclusive culture.