Our Purpose
Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.
Title and Summary
Senior Analyst, Data Scientist - Compliance Strategy, Data Intelligence & Innovation
Who is Mastercard?
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.
Overview
The Compliance Strategy, Data Intelligence & Innovation Group (CSDII) helps detect, investigate, and prevent financial crime across the transaction lifecycle. We work closely with internal Compliance, Legal, Technology, and Operations teams to strengthen anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorist financing (CTF), and sanctions compliance by using data to obtain actionable insights aiming to continuously improve our network.
In the Sr. Analyst, Data Scientist role, you will support transaction and sanctions monitoring programs by performing ongoing tuning of alerts and measuring what works. CSDII is looking for someone who enjoys analyzing data to generate practical improvements, can simplify and automate manual work, and can support AI and analytics projects that strengthen monitoring outcomes in a well-governed and well-documented manner.
Role
- Support tuning and optimization of sanctions screening and transaction monitoring scenarios, with a focus on alert quality, false positive reduction, and regulatory defensibility.
- Design, test, and validate scenario risk indicators and analytical features using transactional, entity, and behavioral data
- Document insights across the scenario lifecycle, including hypothesis development, tuning analysis, validation, and production readiness
- Monitor and assess scenario and model performance to ensure explainability, auditability, and regulator readiness
- Prepare clear summaries of scenario performance, trade offs, and residual risk for compliance leadership and partners
- Build and maintain reusable Python and SQL code to pull, clean, and analyze monitoring data while assuring outputs are accurate, repeatable, and easy to audit.
- Look for ways to automate repeatable manual work (e.g., data preparation, recurring reports, and quality checks) and help test simple solutions with technology partners.
- Support AI and advanced analytics work (e.g., help create features, check how models perform over time, and summarize results in a way that is easy to understand).
- Turn data analysis into clear notes, visuals, and simple documentation that explains what was done, why, and what changed.
- Help improve data quality by reconciling key fields, flagging unusual patterns, and supporting root cause analysis to reduce noise in monitoring.
- Work with investigators and monitoring specialists to understand common typologies, regulatory expectations and reflect that context in your data analysis and automation work.
All About You
Experience
- Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in Data Science, Data Analytics, Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Economics, or a related quantitative field.
- Strong foundation in data analysis, including descriptive statistics, basic hypothesis testing, and translating business questions into analytical approaches.
- Hands-on experience with Python to support data analytics (e.g., pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn).
- Working knowledge of SQL (joins, aggregations, window functions) and an understanding of how to validate and reconcile results.
- Experience with, or a strong understanding of, AI concepts and how they can be applied in a controlled way towards financial crime prevention (e.g., using machine learning or generative AI to help prioritize alerts, reduce false positives, or automate documentation and reporting).
- Demonstrated ability to reduce alert noise while maintaining or improving detection coverage through data driven analysis.
- Experience translating business or regulatory questions into analytical features, thresholds, or performance metrics.
- Experience with production of governance ready documentation to support model changes, internal reviews, and audit or regulatory requirements.
- Clear written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to document work so that it is understandable to both technical and non-technical partners.
- Comfort working with common analytics and reporting tools (e.g., Excel and/or Power BI) and a willingness to learn new platforms and monitoring systems.
- Interest in financial crime prevention with basic understanding of AML and sanctions concepts (e.g., suspicious activity monitoring, sanctions screening, typologies, and why governance and auditability matter).
Personal Attributes
- Ability to proactively manage time and prioritize assignments to meet target dates and deadlines, while delivering thorough, accurate and quality work product.
- Ability to quickly learn and apply payments industry terminology and AML-specific data context.
- Strong attention to detail with the ability to produce accurate, high-quality analytical reports under deadlines.
- Ability to work independently, thrive in fast paced and dynamic environment, and consistently meet established deadlines.
- Ability to clearly explain and defend analytical conclusions verbally and in writing.
- Ability to remain flexible in a demanding work environment while adapting rapidly changing priorities.
- Availability to work in a hybrid model, with a requirement to be in the office 3 times per week.
Corporate Security Responsibility
Every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security. All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks come with an inherent risk to the organization and therefore, it is expected that the successful candidate for this position must:
- Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices.
- Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed.
- Report any suspected information security violation or breach.
- Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.
Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact
[email protected] and identify the type of accommodation or assistance you are requesting. Do not include any medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team will respond to your email promptly.
Corporate Security Responsibility
All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:
Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.
In line with Mastercard’s total compensation philosophy and assuming that the job will be performed in Canada, the successful candidate will be offered a competitive pay based on location, experience and other qualifications for the role and may be eligible to participate in a discretionary annual incentive program. This posting reflects one or more current openings on our team.
Pay Ranges
Toronto, Canada: $83,000 - $132,000 CAD
