Senior Data Scientist - Realfi

Location: Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Department: RealFi

Workplace: hybrid

Description

Job Purpose

As a Senior Data Scientist at RealFi, you will play a critical role in building a data-driven foundation for our yield-bearing stablecoin, USDr. You will work at the intersection of decentralized finance, traditional investment, and product strategy, turning raw data into actionable insights that guide investment decisions, product launches, and risk management.

In this role, you will be a trusted partner to our Investment, Product, and Treasury teams. You will design and deliver analyses that range from due diligence on potential counterparties to forecasting product demand and optimizing liquidity mechanisms. You will help shape our data infrastructure and foster a culture of evidence-based decision-making across our lean, fast-moving team.

We are looking for a business-focused data scientist who thrives in ambiguity, delivers impact quickly, and can communicate complex findings clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. This is not a research role, it’s about applying analytical rigor to real-world business problems in Web3 and finance.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

• Deal Support & Due Diligence: Partner with the Investment Team to assess potential counterparties and assets. Analyze asset books, financial statements, and operational data to evaluate creditworthiness, cash flow reliability, and portfolio health.

• Strategic Ad-hoc Analysis: Address urgent business questions from leadership (such as market sizing, competitor benchmarking, yield sensitivity, and liquidity optimization) to inform product strategy and go-to-market decisions.
• Project Delivery: Lead the development of core data products and monitoring tools from our roadmap, including:
• TVL forecasting and demand modeling
• Competitor analysis
• Liquidity coverage and redemption behavior analysis
• Portfolio performance and cash flow projection tools
• Self-Sufficient Ownership: Proactively identify analytical opportunities, manage projects from scoping to delivery, and communicate insights that drive action.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with Data Engineers, Product Managers, and Investment professionals to ensure data products are reliable, timely, and aligned with business needs.

Key Competencies

• Business Acumen: Ability to translate business problems into analytical frameworks and communicate results effectively to stakeholders.

• Quantitative Finance & Risk Modeling: Experience in credit analysis, cash flow modeling, liquidity risk, or portfolio analytics.

• Web3/DeFi Fluency: Understanding of blockchain data, DeFi protocols, stablecoin mechanics, and on-chain analytics tools (e.g., Dune, Flipside).
• Technical Proficiency: Advanced SQL and Python for data analysis and modeling.
• Experience with dashboarding (e.g., Tableau, Metabase, Streamlit) and version

control (Git).

• Autonomy & Impact-Driven: Proven ability to work independently, prioritize

effectively, and deliver tangible results in a fast-paced environment.

• Collaboration: Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to work across teams

and influence without authority.

Education / Experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a quantitative field (e.g., Data Science, Statistics, Finance, Computer Science, Engineering).

• 5+ years of professional experience in data science, quantitative analysis, or risk modeling.
• Demonstrated experience in both:
• Web3/DeFi/Crypto (e.g., on-chain analysis, protocol metrics, tokenomics)
• Finance, quantitative finance, or risk modeling (e.g., credit scoring, liquidity risk, investment analytics)
• Experience in a startup or fast-paced scale-up environment is highly preferred.
• Familiarity with cloud data platforms (AWS, Snowflake, BigQuery) and data orchestration tools is a plus.
• Professional exposure to emerging markets or private credit is advantageous.

This role requires you to be in the Cape Town office 2 days per week.