PhD Data Scientist, Intern
About this role
As a PhD Data Scientist intern at Stripe, you will spend your days tackling complex financial challenges, from detecting account takeovers and classifying card fraud to modeling merchant-level losses. You will own problems end-to-end, working alongside creative and technically rigorous data scientists to extract insights from rich, complex data and translate them into actionable business recommendations.
The Fraud, Losses, and Financial Crime Data Science team builds the models and data products that safeguard Stripe and its millions of users. You will partner closely with engineering and risk operations to bring production systems to life, utilizing advanced statistical methods and machine learning. This role exists to drive impact on the company's financial integrity and user trust by developing scalable data pipelines, dashboards, and predictive models.
Ideal candidates are ambitious builders and rigorous thinkers who thrive on solving unprecedented problems. If you enjoy the joy of discovery, possess deep curiosity, and want to learn how global economic infrastructure operates, you will find a rewarding home in this internship program.
What you will do
- Apply probability distributions, statistical inference, and hypothesis testing to quantify uncertainty and evaluate business outcomes.
- Use Python or R for data analysis, statistical modeling, machine learning, predictive analytics, and implementing causal inference.
- Build, train, and evaluate predictive models across regression and classification tasks, managing bias-variance trade-offs.
- Model temporal dependencies and trend decomposition to generate and evaluate time-series predictions.
- Identify structural patterns, clusters, and outliers in unlabeled data while deploying models and adjusting thresholds.
- Design, run, and analyze complex experiments using causal inference designs.
- Use SQL and Spark to create, transform, and analyze large datasets.
- Present your work clearly to the data science team, partner teams, and fellow interns.
What you need
- Currently enrolled in a quantitative PhD program such as Data Science, Statistics, Economics, or Mathematics.
- Expecting to graduate in December 2027 or spring/summer 2028.
- Practical experience with SQL and a scientific computing language like Python or R.
- Proficiency with AI tools to accelerate model development, analysis, and coding.
- Demonstrated experience communicating and collaborating with multidisciplinary stakeholders in a team environment.
Nice to have
- Experience writing and debugging data pipelines.
- Demonstrated ability to evaluate and receive feedback from mentors, peers, and stakeholders via previous internships or multi-person projects.
- Ability to learn new systems and form an understanding through independent research and collaboration with subject matter experts.
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
Where is this internship located?
The role is available at Stripe locations in New York, Seattle, and South San Francisco HQ.
What kind of team will I be working with?
You will work within the Fraud, Losses, and Financial Crime Data Science team and partner deeply with Fraud Engineering, Financial Crimes Engineering, and Risk Operations.
What are the eligibility requirements regarding graduation dates?
Candidates must be enrolled in a quantitative PhD program with the expectation of graduating in December 2027 or spring/summer 2028.