Founding Data Engineer / Data Scientist — Payments & Fraud - Accrue

About the Role

We’re looking for a Founding Data Engineer / Data Scientist to own data systems for our payments and fraud domain.

This is our first dedicated data role in this area. You’ll design and build the data foundation that powers internal decision-making, merchant reporting, and audit-ready metrics. This role is hands-on, high-impact, and ideal for someone who enjoys building from scratch and owning outcomes end to end.

This is not a dashboards-only role. You’ll work close to transactional systems and real-world events, solving hard problems around correctness, reconciliation, and trust.

What you’ll do

• Design and implement end-to-end data pipelines for payments and fraud reporting
• Build canonical data models that support:
  • internal KPIs
  • merchant-facing dashboards
  • compliance and audit needs
  • fraud and risk analysis
• Handle real-world data challenges:
  • duplicate events
  • out-of-order delivery
  • partial captures and refunds
  • disputes and corrections
• Establish data quality checks and reconciliation logic to ensure accuracy
• Enable self-service analytics for payments and fraud teams
• Document data models, pipelines, and assumptions clearly
• Work closely with engineering, product, and business stakeholders
• Take full ownership of the domain as the first data hire

What we’re looking for

• Strong experience in data engineering and/or data science
• Proven track record building production data systems used for critical reporting
• Excellent SQL and data modeling skills
• Experience working with transactional or event-driven systems
• Comfort handling ambiguity and making pragmatic tradeoffs
• Strong communication skills—you can explain complex data problems clearly
• An ownership mindset: you don’t wait to be told what to fix

Nice to have

• Experience in fintech, payments, fraud, or other risk-sensitive domains
• Familiarity with data warehouses, ETL/ELT tools, and analytics platforms
• Experience designing systems with auditability and compliance in mind

What success looks like

• Payments and fraud metrics are accurate, trusted, and well understood
• Data discrepancies are rare, detectable, and explainable
• Teams can answer questions without relying on ad-hoc engineering help
• Reporting scales as new products and merchants are added
• You’ve built a solid foundation for future data hires

Benefits & perks

• No-cost and low-cost health plan options for employees and dependents
• Company contributed 401k
• An empathetic team that values mental wellness and work/life balance
• A brand new NYC office!

Work Authorization
Accrue does not provide employment sponsorship. Candidates must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.