Fair Isaac Corporation

AI Innovation and Development, Lead Scientist

Fair Isaac Corporation • $120K — $189K *
San Diego, CA 92154In-Person
Finance & Insurance
Less than 5 years of experience
Reposted Today
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Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • M.S. or Ph.D. in computer science, engineering, physics, or related field.
  • Minimum 3 years of experience in analytic software, data engineering, or machine learning.
  • Strong command of programming languages (C, C++, Java, Python) and distributed computing frameworks.
  • Expertise in predictive analytics, machine learning fundamentals, and statistical analysis.
  • Proficient in Linux environments and scripting languages.
  • Excellent communication and technical leadership skills.

Responsibilities

  • Contribute to the development of advanced ML architectures and pipelines.
  • Integrate and assess advanced ML technologies while maintaining quality controls.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align analytic designs with software practices.
  • Mentor junior engineers and scientists to promote growth and innovation.
  • Travel as required and work outside of regular hours when necessary.

Benefits

  • Inclusive company culture reflecting core values.
  • Opportunity for professional impact and growth through unique experiences.
  • Competitive benefits and rewards programs.
  • Engaging work environment promoting work/life balance and social interactions.
  • Emphasis on diversity and creating an inclusive workforce.
Full Job Description
The Opportunity

FICO is looking for a Lead AI Scientist to join a team building production-grade AI systems for some of the world's largest financial institutions. This is a rare opportunity to work at the intersection of cutting-edge AI and one of the highest-stakes, most regulated environments in the industry where your models directly influence credit and fraud decisions affecting millions of people.

What You'll Contribute

  • Design, train, and evaluate advanced models from statistical and ML models to transformer-based models, LLMs, and generative AI to solve real-world problems across risk and fraud domains for enterprise applications at scale.
  • Design and develop end-to-end model build lifecycle, establishing best practices for data design, model evaluation, observability, and responsible AI deployment in a highly regulated environment.
  • Identify and pursue opportunities to drive model innovation, translating research ideas into production-ready solutions that enhance model performance and business value.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams of researchers, engineers, and product specialists across FICO to translate cutting-edge ideas into practical solutions from model design and development through to model deployment into FICO platform and go-live client support.
  • Engage with clients and pre-sales team to demonstrate model capabilities, support client evaluations, and help drive model adoption by showcasing deep understanding of the market differentiating value of the FICO models.


What We're Seeking

  • PhD or Master's in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related technical field, with hands-on experience in predictive modeling, and applied AI development and a demonstrated ability to work independently and drive problems to resolution.
  • Deep hands-on understanding of ML models, transformer architectures, embeddings, and attention mechanisms, with the curiosity and critical reasoning to go beyond standard open-source framework usage including model training, fine-tuning, and adaptation to domain-specific problems.
  • Demonstrated track record of taking end-to-end ownership of AI/ML solutions from research to production deployment, with open-source or research contributions such as publications, patents considered a strong plus.
  • Strong competency in two or more programming languages (Python, Kotlin, Java, C, C++) and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, DeepSpeed); familiarity with performance and deployment tools such as Triton is a plus. Comfortable working in a Linux environment.
  • Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams on medium-to-large projects, taking accountability for outcomes and managing client interactions with strong communication skills.
  • Experience deploying AI/ML solutions within highly regulated industries (e.g., financial services, healthcare, insurance) is a plus.
  • Experience analyzing large, real-world datasets to understand their underlying context that applies to the model design and translate into effective model feature engineering. Prior experience with real-time payment fraud or risk transactional data, including data landscape knowledge and applicability to a problem domain across fraud and risk, is a plus.


Our Offer to You
  • An inclusive culture strongly reflecting our core values: Act Like an Owner, Delight Our Customers and Earn the Respect of Others.
  • The opportunity to make an impact and develop professionally by leveraging your unique strengths and participating in valuable learning experiences.
  • Highly competitive compensation, benefits and rewards programs that encourage you to bring your best every day and be recognized for doing so.
  • An engaging, people-first work environment offering work/life balance, employee resource groups, and social events to promote interaction and camaraderie.
  • The targeted base pay range for this role is: $120,000 to $189,000 with this range reflecting differences in candidate knowledge, skills and experience.

About Fair Isaac Corporation

Fair Isaac Corporation, also known as FICO, is a data analytics company that provides credit scoring services and decision management solutions to businesses in various industries. The company was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in San Jose, California. FICO's products and services are used by banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, retailers, and other businesses to make data-driven decisions about credit risk, fraud detection, customer acquisition, and more. The company is committed to using advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to help businesses make better decisions and improve their bottom line.
Learn more about Fair Isaac Corporation
Size
3,460 employees
Market Cap
$15.2 billion
Industry
Enterprise Technology
Net Income
$267.9 million
Founded
1956
5 Year Trend
+8.1%
Revenue
$1.3 billion
NASDAQ
FICO
* Ladders Estimates

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