Visa is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating more than 215 billion payments transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive.

When you join Visa, you join a culture of purpose and belonging – where your growth is priority, your identity is embraced, and the work you do matters. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere. Your work will have a direct impact on billions of people around the world – helping unlock financial access to enable the future of money movement.

Join Visa: A Network Working for Everyone.

Visa Research is a newly created research organization as part of the company's effort on expanding its technology research capabilities globally. 

Visa Research conducts both applied and fundamental research. It engages with the company's technology and product teams, business partners, academics, and governments, to explore and develop technologies that are critical to the payments industry in the future. 

Staff Research Scientist

As a Staff Research Scientist at Visa, you will work with a team to conduct world-class research on fundamental technology challenges in machine learning/deep learning and contribute to the long-term research agenda in the future of payments, as well as deliver innovative technologies and insights to Visa's strategic products and business.

This role represents an exciting opportunity to make key contributions to Visa's strategic vision as a world-leading data-driven company. The successful candidate must have strong academic track record and demonstrate excellent system skills. The successful candidate will be a self-starter comfortable with ambiguity, with strong attention to detail, and excellent collaboration skills. 

Responsibilities: 

• Research and develop cutting-edge technologies across a large spectrum of disciplines.
• Advance the development and integration of big data infrastructure that is highly scalable, efficient, extensible, and secure.
• Deliver high-impact intellectual property values through research publications and patents.
• Collaborate with team members to deliver innovative technologies, insights and products to Visa business units to resolve their significant product pain-points and create new growth opportunities.
• Collaborate with our partners in academia, industry and government on key initiatives to advance our security research agenda.
• Work with team members and cross-functional teams (internal/external) that include representation from Technology, Product, Operations, Market Research, etc.
• Foster in-depth and productive relationships at all levels with team members and clients internally and externally.   

Basic:

• PhD degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, or equivalent field

Preferred:

• 2+ years of full time industry work experience.
• Experience in developing machine learning and/or deep learning solutions in related domains.
• 1+ years hands-on experience in deep learning algorithms and techniques, e.g., convolutional neural networks (CNN), recurrent networks (RNN) and/or related areas.
• Proven track record of achieving significant results as demonstrated by grants, fellowships, patents, as well as first-authored publications at leading conferences/workshops such as NIPS, ICML, KDD, WWW, AAAI, SysML or similar
• Publications track record in leading machine learning conferences and/or journals.
• Programming experience and experience with deep learning framework for prototyping ideas.
• Strong track record in research publications and impact in the research community.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to think outside the box and innovate.
• Demonstrated research project/program management experience is a plus.
• Experience in payments or related industry is a plus.
• Experience in graph neural network or related fields is a plus.

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 protected veteran status.  Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable local law, including the requirements of Article 49 of the San Francisco Police Code.