Tala is a world leader in providing direct loans and financial services in emerging markets. We are a global team with diverse backgrounds who are singularly focused on using technology, data and customer-centric approach to meet the financial needs of the 2+ billion people of the emerging global middle class.

Responsibilities:

• Take it from people who have built models and studied problems ranging from microfinance to global climate change: we are tackling an incredibly hard problem with huge social and financial impact. The impact of our models is both intimidating and inspiring. You will be an integral part of the team tackling these challenges.
• We leverage a unique, diverse, and deep data set. You’ll be surprised by what connections we’ve found between our different data sources. One of your tasks will be to uncover these surprising connections and communicating to the team as well as integrating them in the models.
• You will own a model, or multiple models, whether building a country-level credit model from scratch, or integrating new data sources into our existing underwriting models.

Skills & Experience:

• Problem solver. You thrive on finding novel solutions to hard problems. These problems may have ranged from extracting a new dataset from an unexpected source, to building cohorts for customer retention analysis, or the NY Times saturday crossword.
• Expert. You have domain expertise. Tell us about the genetic algorithm you implemented to find a solution to your NP-hard problem, or the hobby that keeps you busy on nights and weekends.
• Curious. You aren’t content until you understand why the features you have built have the explanatory power they do, and why they aren’t just a spurious correlation.
• Opinionated. We are looking for someone to add diversity of thought to our current ensemble of data scientists.
• Communicator and Listener. You are an expert in your field. Can you explain it to others in laymen’s terms? Can you collaborate well with our experts in growth/portfolio/customer experience?
• Fluent in one or more languages. You may not know how a hash table is implemented, but you know when to use one as opposed to an array. We are language agnostic and have expertise in python, R, Spark, MATLAB, and d3.

Requirements:

• Background: surprise us!
• A Master’s in a quantitative field is desired, not required
• Experienced with Python. Given the time constraint of an internship, we ask that you are familiar with Python so that you can get the most from your time as possible.

We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse team with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. We focus on hiring talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

About Tala:

Tala is the leading mobile technology and data science company committed to financial inclusion globally. Millions of people have borrowed through Tala's smartphone app, which provides instant, personalized credit to underserved customers in East Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Tala is backed by leading venture and impact investors including PayPal, Revolution Growth, IVP, and Lowercase Capital. Tala is headquartered in Santa Monica with additional offices in Nairobi, Manila, Dar Es Salaam, Mexico City, and Bangalore.