Associate Data Scientist at Visa in Foster City, CA

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.

Visa will accept applications for this role until at least 05-14-2026

Job Description

As part of Cyber Threat Analytics and Research team (CTAR), you will leverage cutting-edge technologies to perform statistical profiling, inference, classification, clustering and predictive analysis. As a key member of the technical team, you will create and implement sophisticated machine learning models to help derive new insights to defend against cyber-attacks. You will be working with a large variety of data sets, cutting-edge security technologies, and world-class operation teams to create awesome analytics for security and other business units.

Your responsibilities include:

• Analyze cyber event logs using Spark and big data technologies and develop deeper insights into products using advanced statistical methods.
• Devise and implement deep learning models for building user behavior profiles. This includes data acquisition, feature engineering, model development, and deployment.
• Support and optimize other existing analytical models/products.
• Maintain the backend operations pipeline, including the job scheduler and data processes.
• Devise and implement methods for efficiently monitoring model effectiveness and performance in production.
• Use GenAI to create an agentic framework that enhances cyber investigation efficiency.
• As a member of the CTAR team, you will work closely with other data scientists and data engineers to build, design, engineer, and develop analytical software and services that deliver security functionality and improve security efficiency and capabilities through automation.  
• Assist in shaping overall direction, life-cycle management, and leadership for Information Security architecture and technology related to Visa. 
• Communicate clean and persuasive data directly to end users, leadership, and other stakeholders, technical and non-technical.

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

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications • Bachelor's degree, OR 3+ years of relevant work experience Preferred Qualifications • 2 or more years of work experience. • Less than 1 year relevant work experience with either bachelor’s or master’s degree in data science, mathematics, statistics, economics, computer science, engineering, or other related business or quantitative discipline is required. • Solid background and hands on experiences with building Machine learning, deep learning and AI models. • Experience with Generative AI/LLM • Excellent understanding of algorithms and data structures and proficiency in Python and SQL. • Experience working with large datasets using tools and Hadoop, Spark, or Hive. • Excellent analytic and problem-solving capability combined with ambition to solve hard problems. • Strong communications skills and ability to collaborate. • Highly driven, resourceful and results oriented. • Good team player and excellent interpersonal skills. • Demonstrated ability to lead and navigate through ambiguity.

U.S. Applicants Only

The estimated salary range for this position is $112,400.00 to $ 174,500.00 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.