Description

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! Our vision is fast technology, fair service, and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.
Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! We built a new kind of bank because we knew technology had the power to help people save, spend and manage their money in a new and transformative way.
We’re a fully licensed UK bank with the culture and spirit of a fast-moving, disruptive tech company. We’re a bank, but better: fairer, easier to use and designed to demystify money for everyone. We employ more than 3,000 people across our London, Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester offices.
Our technologists are at the very heart of Starling and enjoy working in a fast-paced environment that is all about building things, creating new stuff, and disruptive technology that keeps us on the cutting edge of fintech. We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions regardless of what your primary responsibilities may be, innovation and collaboration will be at the core of everything you do. Help is never far away in our open culture, you will find support in your team and from across the business, we are in this together!
The way to thrive and shine within Starling is to be a self-driven individual and be able to take full ownership of everything around you: From building things, designing, discovering, to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and making sure all processes are efficient and productive to deliver the best possible results for our customers. Our purpose is underpinned by five Starling values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.
Hybrid Working
We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Starling - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person. We don't like to mandate how much you visit the office and work from home, that's to be agreed upon between you and your manager.
Our Data Environment
Our Data teams are excited about the value of data within the business, powers our product decisions to improve things for our customers and enhance effective and agile decision making, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be. Hear from the team in our latest blogs or our case studies with Women in Tech.
We are looking for talented Data Scientists with experience working in Financial crime and Anti-money laundering to help the bank solve complex problems using Machine Learning. This role will be broad in scope and you can expect to collaborate with many teams in order to advise, support and develop processes using the most appropriate methodology for the topic in hand. If you love building Machine Learning based solutions in an R&D driven environment then we’d love to hear from you.
Responsibilities:
You will be part of a team delivering data driven solutions and insights to improve the speed, efficiency, and quality of decision-making
Work proactively with technical and non-technical teams to deliver insights to support the wider business
Build, test and deploy machine learning models which will improve and/or automate decision making
Provide insightful analytics across the bank to assist with decision making
Engage with Engineering teams to ensure we capture data points that are relevant and useful for insights and modelling
Requirements
We’re open-minded when it comes to hiring and we care more about aptitude and attitude than specific experience or qualifications. We think the ideal candidate will encompass most of the following:
Demonstrable industry experience Data Science/Machine Learning in one or more of:
Financial Crime
Anti-money laundering
Transaction monitoring
Anomaly detection
Excellent skills in Python and SQL
Experience with libraries such as Scikit-learn, Tensorflow, Pytorch
Strong data wrangling skills for merging, cleaning and sampling data
Strong data visualisation and communication skills are essential
Understanding of the software development life cycle and experience using version control tools such as git
Demonstrable experience deploying machine learning solutions in a production environment
Desirables:
Experience with AWS/GCP
Desire to build explainable ML models (using techniques such as SHAP)
Interview process
Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:
Stage 1 - 30 mins with one of the team
Stage 2 - Take home challenge
Stage 3 - 90 mins technical interview with two team members
Stage 3 - 45 min final with an executive and a member of the people team
Benefits
25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever works best for you)
An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
16 hours paid volunteering time a year
Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
Life insurance at 4x your salary & group income protection
Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
Generous family-friendly policies
Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing
About Us
You may be put off applying for a role because you don't tick every box. Forget that! While we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we're always open to discussion. So, if you're excited about working with us, but aren’t sure if you're 100% there yet, get in touch anyway. We’re on a mission to radically reshape banking – and that starts with our brilliant team. Whatever came before, we’re proud to bring together people of all backgrounds and experiences who love working together to solve problems.
Starling Bank is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Starling Bank are considered without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
When you provide us with this information, you are doing so at your own consent, with full knowledge that we will process this personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice. By submitting your application, you agree that Starling Bank will collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we will process, where we will process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.
Skills Required

Data Science
Data Wrangling
Data Visualisation
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