Data Scientist II

Job description

Our mission is to make higher education accessible and affordable for everyone. We empower students with financial support and supercharge their ability to pay down their debt, so they can get on the right financial track, fast.

We build tools that help people feel in control of their financial future, including:

• Private student loans- low rates, people-first service, and flexible payments.
• Student loan refinancing- break free from high-interest rates or monthly payments.
• Scholarships - access to thousands of scholarships to help students pay less.

Earnies are committed to helping students live their best lives, free from the stress of student debt. If you’re as passionate as we are about our mission, read more below, and let’s build something great together!

As a Data Scientist, you will report to the Data Science Manager. You will play a pivotal role in our data-driven decision-making and drive impact for our Growth, Risk, Product, and Marketing teams. You will have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects that involve risk modeling, causal inference from experimental results, pricing optimization, and strategy.

What you’ll do:

Depending on the project, you would:

• Conduct experimentation and execute causal inference analyses on pricing, marketing, and conversion models to drive revenue optimization.
• Develop Pricing Optimization algorithms to maximize the unit economics of our lending products while driving meaningful growth in our origination businesses.
• Develop and maintain predictive ML models to assess potential risks and opportunities across our lending products, contributing to the enhancement of risk and marketing assessment procedures.
• Conceptualize, research, and prototype data-driven solutions, effectively communicating their impact to the stakeholders.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams and stakeholders to accelerate solution iteration and achieve measurable outcomes.
• Build funnel dashboards and perform root cause analysis to monitor and identify user behavioral patterns and areas of opportunity.
• Collaborate with data and infrastructure engineers to deploy ML and Pricing pipelines, from data collection through model deployment. This includes automating training and ongoing monitoring utilizing BI tools.
• Prepare technical designs and documentation using git and Confluence.

Ideal background and expertise:

• 2+ years of experience in R/Python and SQL
• 2+ years professional experience in model development and/or data analytics (or Master’s degree in Data Science, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Economics or a related quantitative field with 1+ years of professional experience in model development and analytics)
• Expertise in statistical inference.
• Experience in product analytics and experimental design.
• Expertise in building classification, regression, and forecasting models and deriving insights from A/B tests.
• Experience working in a cross-functional environment with teamwork and excellent communication skills.

Bonus to have:

• Understanding of financial metrics and bond markets.
• Understanding of econometrics and elasticity in pricing optimization.
• Previous experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with BI stack such as Looker, Airflow, and DBT.
• Custom LLM and NLP experience.

#LI-

A little about our pay philosophy: We take pride in compensating our employees fairly and equitably. We are showcasing a range of your potential base salary based on the roles location. The successful candidate’s starting pay will also be determined based on job-related qualifications, internal compensation, candidate location and budget. This range may be modified in the future.

Pay Range

$131,000—$164,000 USD

Earnest believes in enabling our employees to live their best lives. We offer a variety of perks and competitive benefits, including:

• Health, Dental, & Vision benefits plus savings plans
• Mac computers + work-from-home stipend to set up your home office
• Monthly internet and phone reimbursement
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
• 401(k) plan to help you save for retirement plus a company match
• Robust tuition reimbursement program
• $1,000 travel perk on each Earnie-versary to anywhere in the world
• Competitive days of annual PTO
• Competitive parental leave

What Makes an Earnie:

At Earnest, our people bring our cultural principles to life. These principles define how we work, how we win, and what we expect of ourselves and each other:

• Every Second Counts: Speed is our competitive advantage. Our customers need better solutions, and the faster we execute, the greater our chance of success.
• Choose To Do Hard Things: We win by tackling the hard things that others avoid, fueled by grit and resilience.
• Pursue Excellence: Great companies, teams, and individuals never settle and are proud of the work that they do. What’s good enough today won’t be good enough tomorrow. Excellence isn’t a destination; it’s a mindset of continuous improvement.
• Lead Together: Our success comes from how we work together. Leadership is not about titles—it is about action. We take ownership, drive results, and move forward as a team.
• Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously: We take our work seriously, not ourselves. The stakes are high, but a sense of humor keeps us grounded, creative, and resilient.

At Earnest, we are committed to building an environment where our employees feel included, valued, and heard. Our belief is that a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging enables us to move forward with our mission. We are dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team and encourage anyone to apply if your experience is close to what we are looking for.

Earnest provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or genetics. Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for the position in a manner consistent with the Fair Chance Ordinance.