Senior Data Scientist

Senior Data Scientist – Transaction Monitoring

Location: Utrecht (Hybrid)

Client: Rabobank

Hours: 36 hours per week

Contract: 12 months (extension highly likely)

Start: ASAP

Language: English (Dutch not mandatory)

Office days: Monday & Thursday

Make Real Impact. Fight Financial Crime

As a Senior Data Scientist – Transaction Monitoring , you’ll play a frontline role in detecting money laundering and terrorist financing across transactions of 8+ million customers.

This is not theoretical modelling. This is production-grade analytics with direct societal impact.

You will work in a multidisciplinary environment where analytics meets business, IT, architecture, and compliance — improving rule-based monitoring systems today and helping shape advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities for tomorrow.

What You’ll Do

Develop & Improve Transaction Monitoring Models

• Build and optimize rule-based TM models that uncover criminal patterns
• Extract insights from large datasets and translate them into actionable improvements
• Identify and integrate new data sources into existing models
• Write high-quality production-ready code

Bring Models to Production

• Take ownership of (large parts of) data science models
• Ensure robust production deployment in collaboration with IT and architecture
• Anticipate future modelling challenges and proactively solve them

Lead & Influence

• Work closely with functional experts and stakeholders
• Present complex insights clearly (strong storytelling required)
• Coach medior and junior colleagues
• Contribute to long-term strategy discussions with senior management

What We’re Looking For

Must-Haves

• MSc or PhD in Data Science, Econometrics, Mathematics or related field
• 5+ years experience in advanced analytics / AI / modelling
• Strong Python skills
• Critical: PySpark experience
• Experience working with Spark (Azure Databricks is a plus)
• Proven track record of deploying analytics models to production
• Excellent English communication skills

Strongly Preferred

• Motivated to make measurable impact in financial crime detection
• Pragmatic and business-focused — not just building complex models for the sake of it
• Structured, precise, proactive and collaborative
• Strong stakeholder management skills
• Comfortable in a high-paced Agile environment