Senior Data Science Expert

About the Company

Commercial Bank of Qatar, established in 1975 and based in Doha, contributes to the country’s economic growth through a broad portfolio of personal, business, government, international, and investment banking services.

The bank is focused on developing its people by creating opportunities for learning, career progression, and long-term professional growth. It promotes a workplace culture built around innovation, balance, and helping employees achieve their full potential.

This opportunity sits within a digital-first banking environment where the organization aims to shape the future of banking in Qatar.

Role Summary

This senior position is responsible for building sophisticated machine learning solutions for banking use cases such as pricing optimization, customer propensity modeling, and recommendation engines. The role combines strong statistical and machine learning expertise with substantial knowledge of banking and financial services.

The work centers on turning complex challenges across Risk, Finance, Retail Banking, and Wholesale Banking into practical machine learning outcomes. The successful candidate will use their understanding of banking products, regulatory frameworks, and financial metrics to develop models that create measurable business impact.

A strong mix of domain knowledge and technical ability is required, along with solid programming skills in Python and SQL to create functional prototypes that can later be moved into production.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop machine learning models for pricing optimization, including dynamic pricing, rate tuning, and fee optimization.
• Build customer propensity models to predict churn, cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and product adoption behavior.
• Create recommendation systems that support personalized product offers, next-best-action decisions, and better customer engagement.
• Apply banking expertise to convert business problems into machine learning solutions with clear commercial outcomes.
• Work closely with Risk, Finance, and business teams to identify high-impact modeling opportunities.
• Ensure modeling approaches reflect regulatory expectations, risk constraints, and business rules.
• Perform exploratory data analysis to uncover patterns, relationships, and potential modeling use cases in banking data.
• Translate model results into practical business recommendations and insights.
• Define model performance measures that align with business KPIs and financial impact.
• Produce visualizations and reports for stakeholder communication.
• Build working Python prototypes that demonstrate model logic and business value.
• Document methodology, assumptions, limitations, and intended use cases clearly and thoroughly.
• Partner with ML Engineers and AI Engineers to move prototypes into production-ready solutions.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders to clarify needs and validate outputs.
• Present findings, methods, and recommendations to senior management.
• Support model governance, validation, and documentation requirements.
• Follow data policies, ethical standards, and regulatory obligations in all work.

Key Competencies

• Advanced knowledge of supervised and unsupervised learning for classification, regression, and clustering tasks.
• Strong hands-on experience with pricing models, propensity modeling, and recommendation systems.
• Solid grounding in statistical analysis, hypothesis testing, and experimental design.
• Working familiarity with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow and PyTorch.
• Deep understanding of banking products and the customer lifecycle in retail or corporate banking.
• Knowledge of risk frameworks, including credit, market, and operational risk.
• Understanding of finance concepts such as P&L drivers, cost allocation, and profitability analysis.
• Awareness of regulations affecting model development, including IFRS 9 and Basel.
• Strong Python skills for data analysis and model development using tools such as pandas, scikit-learn, and XGBoost.
• Advanced SQL skills, including stored procedures, window functions, temp tables, and recursive queries.
• Experience with visualization and reporting tools.
• Familiarity with Git-based version control, Spark basics, and MLOps concepts such as MLflow and TFX.
• Ability to explain technical ideas in clear business language for non-technical audiences.
• Strong executive presentation capability and experience working across business and technology teams.
• Exposure to Agile practices such as Kanban and Scrum.

Qualifications and Experience

• Master’s degree or PhD in Finance, Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, or another quantitative discipline is strongly preferred.
• At least 8 years of experience in data science or quantitative analysis roles.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in banking or financial services is mandatory.
• Demonstrated success in delivering machine learning models for pricing, propensity, or recommendation use cases.
• Experience in Risk, Finance, or other quantitative banking functions is preferred.
• Prior exposure to model validation, governance, and regulatory requirements within financial services is expected.
• Professional certifications such as FRM, PRM, or CFA are considered an advantage.

Why Join Commercial Bank

• Recognized as Best Digital Bank in the Middle East 2024 by World Finance and Best Mobile Banking App in the Middle East 2024 by Global Finance.
• Offers an innovation-led, digital-first setting where teams work with modern tools and technologies to transform banking.
• Provides opportunities for global partnerships and international exposure.
• Supports employee well-being and work-life balance through a healthy and encouraging environment.
• Includes competitive compensation and benefits aligned with performance and contribution.
• Promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion as core values in the workplace.

Additional Information

Commercial Bank positions itself as a pioneer in Qatar’s banking transformation, blending digital innovation with customer-focused solutions.

Disclaimer

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for the next stages of hiring. The employer may change, withdraw, or close this posting at any time without notice.