At Shakepay, we are driven by a mission to usher in the Bitcoin golden age and reimagine financial services for Canadians. Our culture emphasizes meaningful work, team victories, and celebrating success. Since 2015, we've focused on making Bitcoin accessible, easy, and secure through the Shakepay app. In 2022, we launched the Shakepay Card, enabling users to earn Bitcoin rewards. Today, over one million Canadians use Shakepay to grow their Bitcoin savings. We are regulated across all Canadian provinces and territories, backed by $44M in venture capital, and supported by a passionate and growing community.

About the Position

Introduction

Shakepay is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to join our newly formed Risk team. This role is pivotal in defining how Shakepay measures, understands, and manages risk within our rapidly growing Bitcoin and crypto platform. You will be instrumental in architecting next-generation risk systems and decisioning capabilities, working closely with engineering and business partners.

This is an analytics-first position with selective use of machine learning where it significantly enhances understanding or decision quality. We are open to hiring at either the Senior or Staff level, depending on the candidate’s depth of experience, scope of impact, and ability to lead through ambiguity.

Responsibilities

Partner with engineering to define the architectural and technical strategy for internal risk systems and tooling.
Collaborate with Risk, Engineering, Security, Compliance, Product, and Operations teams to define risk metrics, success criteria, and decision frameworks.
Analyze fraud, scam, and abuse patterns across both crypto and fiat products.
Build and maintain comprehensive reporting to track fraud loss, false positives, customer friction, operational efficiency, and control performance.
Contribute to the design and architecture of data, instrumentation, and decisioning systems powering risk operations and fraud prevention workflows.
Rigorously evaluate and iterate on risk rules and controls using advanced analytical methods.
Apply statistical methods and selective machine learning techniques to improve decision quality, operational efficiency, or signal detection.
Conduct deep-dive investigations into incidents, trends, and emerging threats.
Communicate complex insights clearly and persuasively to senior stakeholders.
Help establish data standards, analytical methods, and decision-making practices within the Risk team.

Success in 3-6 Months:

Establish a clear baseline for core risk metrics, including fraud loss, scam exposure, false positives, customer friction, and operational efficiency.
Define the measurement approach for key risk controls, evaluating impact, tradeoffs, and unintended consequences.
Improve the quality, consistency, and discoverability of data needed for risk decisions and customer outcomes.
Deliver high-leverage investigations identifying concrete opportunities to reduce risk or enhance customer experience.
Create a repeatable process for translating risk analysis into prioritization, product decisions, operational changes, and engineering work.

Requirements

5+ years of experience as a Data Scientist, Decision Scientist, or in a similar analytical role.
Experience with fraud, risk, trust and safety, Anti-Money Laundering (AML), or compliance analytics.
Strong proficiency in SQL and Python.
Demonstrated experience performing deep analytical work and applying machine learning techniques related to regression, classification, experiment design, causal inference, or decision analysis.
Strong product and business judgment, with the ability to connect analytical work to customer outcomes, risk outcomes, and company priorities.
Experience working with modern cloud data warehouses and tooling (e.g., Snowflake, dbt).
Outstanding communication skills and the ability to translate complex analysis into clear business recommendations.
Proven ability to thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
Strong sense of ownership and the ability to constructively challenge assumptions.
Experience partnering closely with cross-functional stakeholders to influence decisions.
Excellent judgment when tailoring analytical toolkits to specific problems.
Fluency in English is required due to the percentage of English-speaking customers and the platform's nature.

Nice to Have

Interest in Bitcoin and familiarity with fintech, payments, crypto, or other regulated industries.

Benefits

Be an Owner: Every employee receives stock options as part of their total compensation.
Reach Your Goals: Yearly salary assessments.
Health & Wellness: Comprehensive health and dental coverage, including health and wellness spending accounts.
Remote-Friendly: Work from anywhere in Canada, with optional access to our office spaces in Montreal and Toronto.
Level Up: A $2,000 annual budget for courses, certifications, and training to support your career growth.
Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, with a $1,000 bonus for using all your vacation.
Parental Leave: Parental leave top-up to 100% of your salary for 18 weeks.
Have Fun Together: Quarterly team-specific and company-wide offsites to foster connection.