Senior Data Scientist
Fatima Hassan
Turning messy data into decisions that move the needle.
Research & practice01 — 05
01Research interests & background
Senior Data Scientist with 5 years building ML models and data pipelines in fintech and healthcare. I care about models that actually get deployed and used, not just models that score well on benchmarks. Based in Abuja, open to remote roles.
Credit Risk Scoring Model
- Question
- A Nigerian fintech was rejecting 40% of creditworthy applicants due to an outdated rules-based scoring system.
- Method
- Built a gradient boosting model trained on 2M+ loan records, incorporating alternative data signals including mobile money behaviour.
- Result
- Reduced false rejection rate by 55% while maintaining the same default rate. Approved ₦4.2B in additional loans in the first quarter.
Patient Readmission Predictor
- Question
- Lagos University Teaching Hospital needed to identify high-risk patients before discharge to reduce 30-day readmissions.
- Method
- Built a survival analysis model using 5 years of EHR data, integrated with the hospital's existing triage workflow.
- Result
- Predicted 72% of readmissions 48 hours before discharge. Pilot reduced 30-day readmissions by 18%.
Full-stack data scientist comfortable from raw pipeline to production model to business stakeholder presentation.
2022 – Present
Senior Data Scientist — Risk & Credit
Kuda Bank
- Built credit scoring models serving 3M+ customers across Nigeria and the UK
- Reduced model deployment time from 6 weeks to 4 days through MLOps pipeline improvements
- Led a team of 3 data scientists and 2 data engineers
2020 – 2022
Data Scientist — Fraud Detection
Flutterwave
- Built real-time fraud detection system processing 50,000 transactions per minute
- Reduced fraud losses by 40% in the first 6 months of deployment
- Presented findings to C-suite and board-level stakeholders quarterly