Senior Data Scientist, Critical Harms - Fraud

WHY DATA SCIENCE & ANALYTICS?

The Data Science & Analytics organization’s mission is to increase our speed, frequency and acumen of making decisions at scale by instilling a data-influenced approach to building products. We cover a wide area of the data spectrum including analytical data engineering, product analytics, experimentation, causal inference, statistical modeling and machine learning. We partner with product verticals and use this extensive tool belt to discover new opportunities and unmet use cases, influence and shape the product roadmap and prioritization, build data products, and measure impact on our community of players and developers.

WHY TRUST & SAFETY?

This role will focus on financial fraud within our Critical Harms team. This area is a new focus for us that will be responsible for identifying and preventing financial crimes on the Roblox platform. This is an exciting opportunity to make a real difference in making sure Robux transactions are safe and secure and our users feel safe on the platform. In this role, you will be the foundational member, initially scoping and sizing the magnitude of financial harms across a wide range of abuse vectors. You will then collaborate closely with product, policy, operations, and engineering partners to develop and implement a robust detection and enforcement strategy. This includes building simple detection systems, developing key metrics to track financial harm, and quantifying the overall impact of financial harms on the platform. Your work will be essential in shaping how Roblox addresses these emerging challenges and ensures a safe and trustworthy environment for all users.

You Will:

• Scope and size out the magnitude of financial harms occurring on the Roblox platform across a wide range of abuse vectors.
• Build detection systems to identify fraudulent activities.
• Develop metrics to measure and monitor financial fraud, and report on key findings and insights to senior leadership.
• Collaborate with and advise a wide range of teams across the company, including but not limited to: Marketplace Economy, Account Security, Customer Care, and Regulatory Compliance.
• Quantify the financial harm caused by fraud on the platform, both to users and creators, as well as to Roblox’s bottom line..

You Have:

• 8+ years of industry experience in data science and/or data analytics 
• 5+ years of experience using big data query/processing languages such as SQL, Hive or Spark to transform/manipulate very large datasets
• 5+ years of experience in working in Trust & Safety, fraud, economy, integrity, or a related field
• Proven track record to lead and build project areas from scratch as an individual contributor
• Exceptional communication and collaboration skills
• Extensive experience working with a wide range of cross-functional partners, including policy, legal, finance, product, and engineering, all the way up to VP/C-suite leadership.
• An advanced Degree or equivalent experience in Operations Research, Computer Science, Applied Math, Physics, Engineering, Statistics, Economics or other technical fields.

You Are:

• Highly dedicated. You are perpetually curious and consistently strive to improve your skills by learning the latest statistical techniques and data tools. You thrive with freedom and autonomy and are excited by the ambiguity that comes from exploring a new problem space. 
• A strong communicator. You are excited by presenting your analysis to a wide range of audiences and enjoy engaging in spirited discussions about the findings. You have the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences and discuss appropriate tradeoffs, and you enjoy working with senior leadership and striving for alignment.
• Motivated by impact. You find great satisfaction in being able to point to direct contributions you’ve made to an organization. You recognize the inherent tradeoffs between further research/experimentation and productionization, and you apply the appropriate methodology to maximize impact in a pragmatic fashion.
• An expert transforming data with SQL and a scripting language such as Python or R. You’re experienced in automating efforts and crunching massive volumes of data in distributed systems using frameworks such as Spark, Hadoop or Flink.