About iwoca

We started in 2012, when we noticed a problem: on average, it was taking eight weeks (and a lot of paperwork) for small businesses to apply for a loan. Worse still, more often than not, that process was ending in a ‘no’.

We knew that bakeries, building firms, salons, and solicitors deserved better. They deserve to be able to grow – hire more hands, invest in stock, market themselves – without all the hold music and absurdly rigid criteria.

We’ve now been around for a decade, and in that time, we’ve:

• grown to a team of 290 iwocans
• worked with over 50,000 small businesses across the UK and Germany
• redesigned the whole business loan process from start to finish – our record is three minutes, 26 seconds.

It’s a good start, but it’s just the beginning. Our mission is help one million businesses who need us, so we still have a long way to go.

Here’s what we’ve learned about lending along the way

• Technology is the way to change this space

From automated decisions to API integrations, tech has the potential to create the changes small businesses have been waiting for – so we can’t stop innovating.

• Embedded finance is the future

More and more, we’re reaching customers by embedding our loans within the apps and systems they use everyday. Our partners are people like neobanks, online marketplaces and accountancy software companies.

• Payments and credit are converging

Lots of small businesses struggle with cash flow; often getting invoices paid from their customers months after paying their own bills. Loans can help them pay these bills, but we also want to tackle the problem at its root by improving payment terms.

• New products are always possible

We’re working to create new loans of all shapes and sizes, and we’ve recently launched iwocaPay to help with these cash flow conundrums.

We work hard to make iwoca a place where everyone feels welcome – we want everyone to confidently be themselves. For us, diversity isn’t an optional add-on. It’s the thing that makes us great.

The Role

We are looking for Data Scientists from strong analytical backgrounds that can take potentially ambiguous, real-world business problems and formulate statistical solutions, which can be implemented in a pragmatic way. We’re looking for people who understand the limitations and assumptions of such a modelling process and can generate actionable insights and build effective predictive models.

About us:

• High calibre and diverse team of data scientists with a range of expertise.
• All members of the team have strong analytical backgrounds in Physics, Mathematics, Engineering etc, some with PhDs in their respective field.
• Broad and significant engagement in all steps of the problem solving process, including specification, solution proposal, implementation and delivery.
• Our development cycle is tight and incorporates elements of Agile processes, which means features or projects go live in days or weeks rather than months or years.
• We value personal development, constructive feedback, sharing knowledge and trying innovative solutions to problems.

What do we do?:

• Application of statistical modelling and machine learning techniques.
• Delivery of data driven solutions and predictions for a diverse range of business problems, including risk assessment and contact prioritisation.
• Development of real-time data pipelining and delivery of ML predictions.
• A/B testing and data analysis using statistical methods to generate insights and optimise existing and future business processes.
• Multi-disciplinary projects with the wider tech team and business stakeholders.

We want to pay all of our employees fairly, so that’s why we regularly benchmark salaries based on market rates and to recognise your increasing value to our business. We are ideally looking to pay between £65,000 – £100,000 for this role, this isn’t fixed so let us know in your application what you are looking for. We know there may be some candidates who may not fit within this salary range, if this is the case we would still love to hear from you.