Data Scientist III

About the Team

The Data Science team at Navi plays a central role in building intelligent solutions that power our products and drive business impact. We work across key domains such as Lending, Collections, KYC, UPI Growth and Ads recommendation, applying advanced machine learning/deep learning/GenAI techniques to solve high-impact challenges. Our work involves a diverse range of data types—including text, image, and tabular data—and we closely collaborate with cross-functional teams like Product, Business, Engineering, etc. to deliver end-to-end solutions.

About the Role

As a Data Scientist 3 at Navi, you'll be an integral part of a team that's building scalable and efficient solutions across lending, insurance, investments, and UPI. You won't just be solving predefined problems - you'll identify the problems and solve for getting high business impact. This role offers the opportunity to lead high-impact data science initiatives that directly influence strategic business decisions. It involves working at the intersection of advanced machine learning, large-scale data processing, and cross-functional collaboration, with a focus on building scalable solutions and fostering a culture of technical excellence and innovation within the team.

What We Expect From You

• Strategic Project Leadership: Drive end-to-end delivery of high-impact data science initiatives, from conception and prototyping to large-scale deployment, ensuring alignment with business goals and measurable outcomes.
• Stakeholder Management & Cross-Functional Leadership: Proactively engage and influence stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Business, and Executive teams, shaping problem definitions and championing data-driven decision making.
• Technical Depth & Thought Leadership: Demonstrate deep expertise across machine learning and deep learning concepts, setting technical direction and solving highly complex, ambiguous problems.
• Advanced Data Solutions: Architect and deliver solutions across diverse data types—tabular, text, image, and speech—leveraging cutting-edge models and best practices to drive business value at scale.
• Innovation & Research: Lead experimentation with emerging algorithms and technologies, fostering a culture of innovation and staying ahead of industry trends, especially in the fintech domain.
• Robust Model Governance: Establish and uphold best practices for model validation, monitoring, performance tracking, and risk management in production environments, ensuring reliability and compliance.
• Mentorship & Team Development: Mentor and guide junior team members, facilitate technical reviews, and actively contribute to a culture of knowledge sharing, continuous learning, and technical excellence within the team.

Must Haves

• Bachelor's or higher degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a quantitative field, with a demonstrated research mindset and 5+ years of relevant experience
• Deep understanding of modern machine learning techniques, underlying mathematics, and hands-on experience with key ML frameworks (such as scikit-learn, Keras, TensorFlow, PySpark, MLlib, etc.)
• Strong foundation in statistics, machine learning (e.g., Random Forests, XGBoost, SVMs), and inference techniques, with expertise in hypothesis testing, simulations, and optimization methodologies.
• Proven experience working with distributed computing platforms for large-scale data processing and model training
• Strong programming skills, preferably in Python, Scala, or similar languages
• Demonstrated ability to drive large-scale machine learning projects end to end—from problem formulation and data preparation to deployment and monitoring
• Proven track record of delivering high business impact through data science solutions in previous roles
• Experience leading projects with multiple team members and/or mentoring junior colleagues is preferred

About Navi

Navi is on a mission to make finance simple, accessible, and affordable for a billion Indians. Guided by a strong customer-first approach, the company is building tech-first solutions that work at scale. Their offerings include a range of financial products and services across Loans, Insurance, Mutual Funds, Digital Gold, and UPI. Founded by Sachin Bansal & Ankit Agarwal in 2018, Navi is one of India's fastest-growing financial services organizations.

Our Culture

At Navi, ambition meets opportunity, and ideas turn into impact quickly. We empower people with high ownership from the start, encouraging them to solve meaningful problems and build with excellence. Teams work in an environment that values speed, collaboration, and craftsmanship, while celebrating learning, growth, and shared wins. The company is guided by The Navi OS—a set of principles that shape how we work and win together. You can explore them at navi.com/our-values to see what drives them every day.

If this feels like you, Navi is the place to grow, thrive and make a real impact.