Director, Data Science (Payments Foundation Models)

Job Description

What it's all about -

The Payments Foundation Models team is a new, high-impact initiative within the Visa Data Science organization. Based in Cambridge, UK, and working closely with global Visa engineering and product teams, the group’s mission is to build the next generation of payments-focused foundation AI models. These models will power a range of premium Risk and Identity Solutions (RaIS) products, such as fraud scores, with the goal of generating more than 100M dollars in new revenue by FY2030, and may be extended into other domains such as credit risk modelling or agentic commerce personalization.

Role Summary

As Director, Payments Foundation Models, you will build and lead a world-class engineering and data science team responsible for:

• Designing and implementing advanced tooling to create, train, and operationalize payments foundation models.

• Developing, maintaining, and documenting models for deployment across different jurisdictions, ensuring compliance with local regulations and Visa’s global standards.

• Partnering with downstream modelling teams across Visa to integrate foundation models into their products and solutions.

• Driving model governance excellence, ensuring adherence to Model Risk Management (MRM) and Data Governance frameworks.

• Engaging with customers and stakeholders to understand needs, share insights, and ensure models deliver measurable business impact.

This is a high-visibility leadership role requiring deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Delivery

• Define and execute the Payments Foundation Models roadmap in alignment with Visa’s AI strategy and revenue goals.

• Oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of model development — from data acquisition and preprocessing to model training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.

• Ensure scalability, robustness, and jurisdictional compliance of deployed models.

• Identify and develop new business opportunities for foundation model integration beyond RaIS.

Technical Expertise & Governance

• Lead the development of core tooling, pipelines, and infrastructure for efficient model creation and maintenance.

• Champion best practices in Model Risk Management, ensuring transparency, explainability, and compliance.

• Oversee data governance, privacy, and security practices in line with Visa’s Global Data Use Policy and regulatory requirements.

• Ensure documentation and reproducibility standards are met for all models.

Team Leadership & Collaboration

• Build, coach, and inspire a multidisciplinary team of data scientists, ML engineers, and research scientists.

• Promote a culture of innovation, high performance, and continuous learning.

• Collaborate closely with product, engineering, risk, and commercial teams to maximize impact.

• Act as a thought leader in AI and payments, representing Visa in industry forums, client engagements, and academic collaborations.

Client & Stakeholder Engagement

• Work with Visa clients and partners to understand market needs and articulate the value of foundation model capabilities.

• Support go to market go to market efforts for Foundation Model-powered products.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in the office will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager. 

Qualifications

What we'd like from you - 

Education to Masters level or above in a relevant STEM subject, such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics or Engineering.

Proven track record of leading large-scale AI/ML initiatives, preferably in fintech, payments, or fraud prevention.

Deep expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, deep learning, or related AI domains.

Strong background in model risk management, data governance, and regulatory compliance.

Experience building, managing and leading high-performing technical teams.

Excellent stakeholder engagement and communication skills, including with executive and client audiences.

Demonstrated success in translating AI innovation into commercial impact.



Preferred:

Experience with foundation model architectures and transfer learning.

Prior work with regulated data in multiple jurisdictions.

Familiarity with the Visa Risk and Identity Solutions or similar fraud detection platforms.

Experience in STEM research.

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.