Data Lead

DPDzero is a data-driven company, and we’re looking for a Data Lead:

Scope: You work on both data engineering and analytics (generating conclusions from data), offloading the CTO.
Tools and technologies: You’re familiar with a variety of tools — low-code, hosted, open-source, AWS first-party, third-party… You’re familiar with a variety of formats like columnar vs row-oriented, relational vs non, normalised vs denormalised, and Parquet. You know what the pros and cons of each of them are. You know when to use each (both from a technical and business perspective), and caution us against making mistakes that require a lot of time and effort to reverse, by failing fast.
Appropriate for our scale: You know what level of data infrastructure is appropriate for a company of our scale, when data should be centralised, when fragmented data is okay, when best practices are overkill (vs when they’re appropriate), etc. Our tech should be one step ahead of business needs, not behind, not barely meeting requirements, but on the other hand, not 10 steps ahead.
Upskilling: You’re an expert in data science / machine learning and upskill the company, not just execute what we could have executed ourselves with our existing skill set. In particular, you’ll be providing upskilling and providing leadership and guidance to our data team as a result of the learnings from your diverse experience.
You’ve done both routine and strategic work in data:
1. Routine: you’ve set up routine data flows between companies (APIs, file uploads, dashboards, reports)
2. Strategic: you’ve delivered measurable business results (like millions of dollars of additional revenue) at scale from data, by coming up with models and data-driven strategies, (validating them with experiments as needed), segmenting users into different groups to apply different strategies, etc in order to draw data-backed conclusions. How do we make better use of the data we have?
3 types of work: You perform the following three areas of work:
1. People management: Hiring, onboarding, giving feedback, coaching, offboarding when needed…
2. Leadership: Reviewing other people’s work (e.g., code reviews, design reviews, project plan reviews, mid-course project reviews…)
3. IC: Working as an IC at least a day a week. You should timebox this time, saying no to any other activities that would intrude into this time.
Team health: You ensure that the team is healthy, where each person has a balance between work he finds fulfilling and work he finds not, important (long-term) work is not neglected because of the noise of urgent (short-term) work, refactoring (say client-agnostic work into a base layer that can be applied to all clients)… You ensure that the team is on an upward spiral rather than a downward spiral and you don’t hesitate to push back against business people regardless of seniority.
1. Knowledge sharing: You share knowledge in the team, whether writing documentation like design docs, conducting talks or other ways, to upskill team members, get newcomers up to speed quickly, and have a healthy bus factor.
Top-down and bottom-up: You work strategically to deliver agreed-upon company goals (top-down). You also explore new goals / directions / projects to generate value in ways that haven’t been considered by the existing team (bottom-up).
Dimensions of work: You know when to automate things, and when to do them manually, you are able to think strategically one year ahead and plan work, hire people and execute projects so that eng results are delivered in time for the desired business results. You know how much of the work should be client-specific vs reused, and you build a base layer of technology that results in a great experience for customers, doesn’t take a toll on the team, and is sustainable as the number of customers grows.
Lifecycle: You deliver results across the lifecycle of data engineering projects, from brainstorming → proposals → validation → design → implementation → collecting metrics → validating success and feeding that back into the first step, so that our flywheel spins faster with each iteration.
Earning respect: You earn the respect of the team and lead via influence, relying on your formal authority only when needed.
Collaboration: You’re good at collaborating downward (working with data engineers of varying levels of experience), upward (with founders), and laterally (with other teams like SDEs, DevOps and business teams).
Prioritisation: There’s always more work to do than time, so you prioritise proactively, considering both urgency and importance of tasks.
Ill-defined tasks: You take on ideas that are vague across multiple dimensions, drive a process to iteratively refine it with multiple stakeholders, ending up with a task or project precise enough to be implementable.

Why you should consider this job

Big market: There are billions of borrowers in the world and most adults need some form of formal credit.
Industry disruption: We’re uniquely qualified to significantly improve the collections industry by solving the unsolved problems: First, the market is fragmented and there is no one big player. Second, existing players just pressure the borrower to repay without listening to their unique problems. When you work with us, you get to build the future of this industry.
Funding & Revenue: We’re funded by Blume, IndiaQuotient & Better Capital. We are at USD 2m ARR with a growth of 3x just the last 12 months. We are in the top 1% of startups of similar stage when it comes to revenue and close to break even.
Culture: We’ve built a culture based on being direct to each other in a high-trust environment, and working together in an ego-less manner to do what’s right for the customer. We go the extra mile to make sure we treat each person fairly. During evaluation of our employees, we really make sure that we take multiple inputs from people they work with and ensure that we minimise bias. Support to succeed: In this job, you’ll have all the support you need to succeed, such as access to highly qualified engineers, the ability to hire more if needed and sufficient cloud budget.
Experimentation: We believe in experimentation, that we need to try a couple of things before we find the one that works. We’ll support you in your experiments, with an appropriate experimentation time and money budget if you think that helps.
Work with founders are highly accomplished. We have seen multiple startup journeys over the last 10+ years.
- Ananth Shroff launched Exotel’s Indonesia business division when he was just 22. At Setu, he was responsible for GTM for getting from 0 to 1 Billion USD GTV, contributing to Setu’s acquisition.
- Ranjith BR was responsible for bringing the integration TAT from 4 months to 1 week which was crucial for onboarding 18k merchants in 1 year and achieving the 1 Billion USD GTV at Setu.

About DPDzero

Credit penetration in India faces significant challenges, necessitating focused attention. Without proper infrastructure, extending credit to unserved and underserved populations remains elusive.

DPDzero is on a mission to enhance credit penetration by enabling lenders to concentrate on acquiring new customers, while we handle delinquency management. We are an 18-month-old startup, collaborating with over 20 lending partners . We have secured $3.25 million in seed funding from Blume Ventures, India Quotient, Better Capital, etc.

Company Description:

DPDzero is a pioneering fintech company dedicated to extending formal credit access to the next billion individuals in India. Our cutting-edge platform leverages machine learning and a digital-first approach to transform the lending industry. By prioritizing compliance, data-driven decision-making, and a culture of experimentation, we aim to maximize value for lenders while delivering an unparalleled customer experience. Join us as we revolutionize the financial landscape and empower individuals with greater financial opportunities.

Customers:

At DPDzero, we work with a diverse range of ambitious lenders, both established players and emerging disruptors, who are reshaping the credit ecosystem in India. Some of our esteemed customers include Cashe, Ring, TATA Capital, IndusInd Bank, KreditBee, and more, with new additions each month.

Our Approach:

We partner with our lenders by taking charge of their collections portfolio, allowing them to focus on customer acquisition while we ensure efficient recovery from their customers. Our technology-driven platform leverages machine learning algorithms to optimize collections strategies and drive maximum recovery rates.