Manager, Data Science

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Manager, Data Science

Interested in creating the methodologies and models that empower end-to-end marketing campaign management, including audience targeting, campaign execution, and measurement? Our platforms operate at global scale, processing over 175 billion transactions and enabling data-driven marketing solutions for financial institutions across markets worldwide. The overarching goal of data-driven marketing is to deliver the right content, to the right person, at the right time. We are looking for individuals who are passionate about data science solutions that will shape the future of digital marketing technology.

The Marketing Services Technology team is looking for Data Science Manager.
This position will manage an efficient team of globally distributed data scientists, as well as make an individual impact on Marketing Services data science goals.

The Role
As part of the Marketing Services team, the role involves:
• Partner with global, cross functional teams to design, develop, and maintain advanced analytics and data science solutions that drive business impact.
• Propose and present creative solutions to existing challenges that are new to the company, the financial industry and to data science.
• Research and evaluate emerging AI, machine learning, and data science technologies to identify innovative opportunities and potential risks.
• Measure, validate, implement, monitor and improve performance of both internal and external facing machine learning models that deliver actionable insights for marketing.
• Apply various Machine learning (i.e. SVM, Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, CATBoost etc), Deep learning techniques (i.e. LSTM, RNN, Transformer etc.) and LLMs to solve analytical problem statements.
• Translate advanced analytics, model results, and experimental findings into clear, data driven insights for senior business and product stakeholders.
• Design and implement robust data pipelines, including ingestion, aggregation, and processing of large-scale, high dimensional datasets.
• Contribute to the development and adoption of frameworks, standards, best practices, and guardrails that ensure responsible, compliant, and resilient AI solutions.
• Identify areas where data science capacity falls short of needs and provide thoughtful and sustainable solutions to benefit the team
• Be a strong, confident, and excellent writer and speaker, able to communicate your vision and roadmap effectively to a wide variety of stakeholders

All About You
Education & Experience:
• Experience in researching and adopting new technologies, especially in the GenAI and agentic space
• Experience in driving the development, validation, monitoring, and continuous improvement of predictive models, statistical techniques, and algorithms aligned with business objectives.
• Experience in data management, mining, analytics, reporting, product development, and quantitative analysis.
• Experience in mentoring and coaching other data scientists
• Strong academic background in Computer Science, Data Science, Technology, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field—or equivalent work experience.

Technical Skills:
• Proficiency in Python, Spark, Hadoop platforms (Hive, Impala, Airflow, NiFi), and SQL.
• Familiarity with machine learning frameworks, libraries, data structures, and software architecture.
• Familiarity with relevant technologies (e.g. GenAI, LLMs, Agentic AI, TensorFlow, Sklearn, Pandas, etc.).
• Experience with BI platforms like Tableau or Power BI is a plus.

Analytical & Communication Skills:
• Strong analytical skills with a proven ability to translate data into compelling insights.
• Experience interacting with stakeholders to understand technical needs and deliver effective solutions.
• Ability to articulate the business value of products and contribute to marketing tool set

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.