--- title: 'Data Scientist, Underwriting at Parafin' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-underwriting-parafin-san-francisco-fdq8ycms3st7' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-04' --- # Data Scientist, Underwriting at Parafin - **Company:** Parafin - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-03-20 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-04 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/parafin/92807f0c-0c67-4516-bbf2-dc809516de14 ## Job description About Us: At Parafin, we’re on a mission to grow small businesses. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, but traditional banks often don’t have their backs. We build tech that makes it simple for small businesses to access the financial tools they need through the platforms they already sell on. We partner with companies like DoorDash, Amazon, Worldpay, and Mindbody to offer fast and flexible funding, spend management, and savings tools to their small business users via a simple integration. Parafin takes on all the complexity of capital markets, underwriting, servicing, compliance, and customer service for our partners. We’re a tight-knit team of innovators hailing from Stripe, Square, Plaid, Coinbase, Robinhood, CERN, and more — all united by a passion for building tools that help small businesses succeed. Parafin is backed by prominent venture capitalists including GIC, Notable Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and Thrive Capital. Parafin is a Series C company, and we have raised more than $194M in equity and $340M in debt facilities. Join us in creating a future where every small business has the financial tools they need. Our Impact Data science is integral to Parafin’s mission. Our platform partnerships and lending history provide rich insights into the financial health of small businesses around the world. This empowers us to create fair, automated, and broad access to financial services. As Parafin scales, the breadth and depth of our data grows with it, amplifying the impact we can have on customers and the trajectory of our business. ## Our Team Enthusiasm, skepticism, and respect for data are in our DNA – two of our co-founders were PhD data scientists at Robinhood. Since our founding, we have grown the team to include perspectives from graduate studies in physics, mathematics, bioengineering, economics, financial engineering, and electrical engineering and professional experience at Robinhood, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Faire, Segment, Facebook, and Google. We value first-principles thinking, attention to detail, and craftsmanship. Our Work The underwriting team builds and relentlessly improves the systems that determine eligibility, sizing, and pricing for Parafin lending products. Every dollar originated by the company is derived from underwriting’s business-critical assets. Our work ensures that Parafin stands out among lenders for its distinctive ability to use data and technology, and deliver a highly automated, accurate, and fair lending experience. Our team partners closely with leaders across the company to shape what is possible: how can we make our underwriting more reliable? What data is most important to collect, to provide the best outcomes and growth? What new markets and products should we expand into? We look for teammates who balance the creativity and courage to implement new ideas, with the scientific rigor that helps ensure those ideas succeed. Example projects: - Training a quantile regression model to forecast the distribution of SMB revenues and precisely size our financing offers - Using LLMs to help build a risk model and forecast that lets us underwrite merchants on banking transaction data - Performing risk-based pricing optimization and experimentation - Collaborating with engineering to build a modular real-time underwriting system - Building a simulation platform to model and evaluate conversion and risk exposure across varied configurations for our financing offers - Ingesting new data sources from both 3rd parties and partner platforms, and evaluate their use in improving our risk predictions Beyond these focus areas, our team helps expand our impact by recruiting exceptional talent, improving our tools, and supporting each other through regular seminars and project reviews. ## About You ## Your Impact You will make an outsized impact on Parafin’s trajectory by leading projects from end to end. You will quickly learn new methods, apply them across diverse areas of the business, and implement them robustly. You will develop expertise in specific areas of the business, but may tackle projects across domains as our priorities evolve. You’ll own the full data-science lifecycle, from research to deployment, to power our underwriting engine. Specifically, you will: - Design, train, and deploy production underwriting models - Design experiments and metrics to drive risk and pricing decisions - Partner with engineering and product teams to architect automated underwriting systems - Identify business opportunities to improve growth and profitability via improvements to our underwriting posture ## Your Background and Skills We are open to candidates from a variety of academic backgrounds and professional experiences. We believe the most effective data scientists bring the following skills to their work: - Statistical Reasoning - Approach data analysis with a critical, intellectually honest eye - Design concise metrics that guide decision making - Employ robust experimental design and causal inference methods - Develop valid and predictive machine learning models - Business Acumen - Identify and effectively prioritize business problems - Solve business problems using appropriate data science techniques - Anticipate the impact of your work on our financial performance, customers, and compliance obligations - Engineering Mindset - Write legible, reliable, and tested code - Build or source tools to boost the team’s efficiency - Architect technical systems that are highly scalable, reliable, and observable - Leadership and Collaboration - Model Parafin’s values of efficiency, intellectual honesty, accountability, and empathy - Build trusted relationships with stakeholders - Document work, seek feedback, and share learnings proactively - Focused Execution - Prioritize high-impact use of your time - Scope projects rigorously - Act with urgency ## What We Offer - Salary: DS/ Senior DS: $200k - $260k + EQ Staff/Principal: $265-330k+ EQ - Equity grant - Medical, dental & vision insurance - Work from home flexibility - Unlimited PTO - Commuter benefits - Free lunches - Paid parental leave - 401(k) - Employee assistance program If you require reasonable accommodation in completing this application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please contact us. ## About Parafin ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Parafin is a financial infrastructure company that provides platforms with embedded financial products for small businesses. - **Entity Type**: Private (Line of Credit – II; total raised $412M) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2020 - **Founders**: Sahill Poddar, Vineet Goel, Ralph Furman ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Embedded finance / Fintech infrastructure - **Target customers**: B2B – marketplaces, vertical SaaS platforms, and payment processors that serve small businesses - **Mission / purpose**: “Power the financial services of platforms so small businesses can run and grow themselves despite uncertain economic conditions.” ## Products & Services - **Capital**: White-labeled working capital financing for small businesses. Offers are pre-approved, disbursed in as little as 24 hours, with no interest or late fees. AI-powered underwriting trained on over 1 billion cross-industry data points. - **Pay Over Time**: A payment method that allows end customers to pay over time, helping platforms grow their bottom line. - **Spend**: A spend card program that turns everyday customer spend into revenue and loyalty for the platform. ## Market Standing - **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed - **Key Metrics**: - Total funding: $412M (latest round: Line of Credit – II in 2026) - Extended over $25 billion in offers to hundreds of thousands of businesses - Over 50,000 businesses funded - **Notable Investors / Partners**: Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, GIC, Notable Capital, Redpoint Ventures; also Trinity Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, EverBank, Cross River. Platform partners include DoorDash, Amazon, Worldpay, Walmart, and Mindbody. - **Growth Signals**: - Ranked #10 on the 2025 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 - Ranked #13 on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list - Named to the 2026 Forbes Fintech 50 - Recognized as one of “America’s best startup employers (2026)” - Expanded warehouse credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank, EverBank, and Trinity Capital (May 2026) ## Competitive Advantages - **AI-powered underwriting** that continuously improves using over 1 billion data points, enabling high approval rates and pre‑approved offers. - **White‑labeled, deeply integrated UI** that feels native to the platform partner. - **Fast capital deployment** – funds in as little as 24 hours with no interest or late fees. - **Trusted by leading platforms** (DoorDash, Amazon, Worldpay, Walmart) providing strong distribution and credibility. ## Strategic Focus - Expand the suite of embedded financial products (Capital, Pay Over Time, Spend). - Deepen partnerships with platforms and payment processors to reach more small businesses. - Continue to invest in AI/ML underwriting to improve approval rates and risk management. - Scale the warehouse credit facility and debt capacity to support growing loan origination. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & values**: Accountability, Efficiency, Empathy, Intellectual Honesty. Emphasis on seeking truth, giving feedback, and being results-oriented. - **Benefits**: Unlimited PTO, medical/dental/vision insurance, 401(k) plan, commuter benefits, free in-office lunches, HSA & FSA options, paid parental leave, pet insurance discount, mental health & well-being resources, coffee chat allowance, peer recognition program, free equity tax advising. - **Work environment**: Office‑first in San Francisco (301 Howard Street). Roles span Engineering, Data Science, Design, Finance, Marketing, Operations, Platform Growth, and Sales. - **Recognition**: Named “America’s best startup employers (2026)” and “Fintech Innovation 50,” indicating strong employee satisfaction and industry impact. ## Sources 1. [parafin.com](https://www.parafin.com/) – Official website 2. [parafin.com/about](https://www.parafin.com/about) – About page 3. [parafin.com/careers](https://www.parafin.com/careers) – Careers page 4. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/parafin](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/parafin) – Open roles 5. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/parafin) – CB Insights company profile ## Other roles at Parafin - [Senior Manager, Customer Experience](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-customer-experience-parafin-san-francisco-p2s45x6gvnxy) — San Francisco, CA - [Risk Operations Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/risk-operations-specialist-parafin-san-francisco-qtx7rzs0rc2z) — San Francisco, CA - [Data Analytics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/data-analytics-engineer-parafin-san-francisco-nq1rkbspzdjj) — San Francisco, CA - [Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-parafin-san-francisco-1wg6p2st3abc) — San Francisco, CA