Lead Data Scientist

Visa is hiring a Lead Data Scientist in Bellevue, United States. It pays $180k-$288k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Visa.

Level's read on this job

Builds AI ●●●● is how Level rates this data scientist role: the job is building AI systems.
Pay on this posting starts 7% higher than the typical data scientist posting on Level.
The posting mentions data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a lead role.
Visa has 822 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

Lead Data Scientist to invent, design, and build AI-driven products and agentic experiences for the Visa Acceptance Platform.

data-scienceartificial-intelligencemachine-learningdistributed-systems

About Us
Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

The Visa Acceptance Platform is the foundation for creating innovative payment solutions that drive exceptional customer experience. It lets you easily leverage a broad range of pre-integrated modular services and a growing ecosystem of technology and payments partners. Because it's Visa, the platform is secure, robust, and resilient. And because it's open, it will continue evolving to support you into the future.

At Visa, we believe AI technologies have the potential to radically transform commerce. We launched Visa Intelligent Commerce to enable this next era of commerce. This program provides the infrastructure and tools developers need to build trusted, agentic experiences.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and be part of AI transformation journey at Visa.

We are looking for a versatile, curious, and energetic Lead Data Scientist to join our team of passionate and dedicated engineers. We are the backbone for innovative data science and artificial intelligence developments at Visa acceptance, and we thrive on solving complex challenges on a global scale! As a Lead Data Scientist, you will be an integral part of a multi-functional development team inventing, designing, building, and testing products that reach a truly global customer base.

You will face big challenges and question the status quo, changing the way data products are developed at Visa! Come join us and see your efforts shape the digital future of payments.

The focus is on defining, executing, and delivering product and technical features at scale quickly and promoting a diverse culture of cross-functional collaboration and engineering excellence. Be an idea leader and bring industry best practices to benefit the team and the wider organization. The ability to balance demanding business capabilities with building for operational excellence while meeting regulatory, security and privacy requirements.

The successful candidate will be comfortable navigating the challenging dynamic payments space and leading global teams responsible for platform transformation efforts. This candidate will play a pivotal role in our continued embrace of AI, seeking new paths to revenue by improving delivery efficiency and pushing forward for new products.

Essential Functions:

Provides technical expertise and mentors others to implement extensible, maintainable, and reusable code, defines framework, principles, coding patterns, guidelines, styles, and standard methodologies, and adheres to all security requirements for the application of artificial intelligence and data science.
Develops strategies for and leads team's efforts to drive efficiencies across data extraction and ensure data quality and completeness using data wrangling, complex data modeling, and artificial intelligence.
Ensures adherence to data management principles, governance, process, and tools to maintain data quality across products.
Advises on technical specifications during discussions with collaborators (e.g., Product owners, business partners, Cybersecurity) to identify and clarify sophisticated technical or business requirements and identify business needs and upstream and/or downstream system/application dependencies.
Identifies complex trends across relevant data sources and uses insights to plan platform-wide future solution updates. Identifies opportunities and defines roadmap for software upgrades and server patches for security remediation where applicable.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications • 10 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD Preferred Qualifications • 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD • Three (3) years of experience building AI / ML powered models for predictive analytics / insights • Four (4) years of experience solving data problems using data technologies (e.g., Hadoop, Hive, Kafka, Redis, NoSQL, RDBMS). • Two (2) years of experience designing, implementing, and maintaining ETL pipelines. • Three (3) years of Experience with data analysis, metrics building & evaluation. • Experience with Big Data and Analytics in general leveraging technologies like Hadoop, Spark, Flink and MapReduce.

U.S. Applicants Only

The estimated salary range for this position is $180,000.00 to $ 288,000.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity.Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.

Work Hours

Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements

This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements

This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protect veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

How we rate this

Lead Data Scientist at Visa rates 85 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Lead Data Scientist is an open job at Visa.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $180k-$288k a year.
The role is based in US - Bellevue, WA.
The job was posted on April 29, 2026.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by Visa. Apply on Visa

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Data ScienceArtificial IntelligenceMachine learningDistributed Systems

Also common in data scientist jobs at this level

Python Machine learning SQL LLM Generative AI AWS

Pay

This job starts at: $180k
Typical data scientist job: $168k

This posting starts 7% above the typical data scientist job. See data scientist jobs

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where data science was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where artificial intelligence was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where machine learning was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, and Distributed Systems. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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