Research Scientist - Financial Inclusion at Scale

The Impact

Your algorithms will directly unlock financial opportunities for millions of people across Africa who've been excluded from traditional banking. We've already helped over 5 million customers access $1.5 billion in credit, and your research could accelerate this impact exponentially.

It's your chance to be part of something that's literally transforming lives across an entire continent 🌍 Imagine working on challenges where success means a small business in Lagos secures its first inventory loan, a family in Nairobi accessing educational content through their first smartphone, or entire communities gaining financial resilience through accessible digital services.

The Opportunity

🎯 Mission-driven research: Every model you develop helps expand financial inclusion for under-banked populations.
⚡ Immediate impact: See your work improve lives in real-time, not just citations.
🏆 Global recognition: Join a company named by TIME100 as one of the world's most influential and by the Financial Times as Africa's fastest-growing for 4 consecutive years (2022-2025).
📚 Research freedom: Publish, attend conferences, and collaborate with academic institutions while solving meaningful problems.
🌱 Environmental impact: We're carbon-negative, having displaced over 2 million tonnes of emissions.

What You'll Do

• Build generative AI models (VAEs, GANs, diffusion models) for financial inclusion across Africa.
• Prototype and iterate advanced models, from credit risk assessment to customer behaviour modeling.
• Publish research at top conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI etc) while solving real-world problems.

• Work with teams across Africa and Europe to deploy Machine Learning solutions that expand financial access.

  Our Mission 🌍

  We create financial inclusion for the traditionally excluded through a fair, flexible, customer-centric financing model. We strive to drive greater inclusion of women, youth, and low-income communities.

  Our Impact 💚

  Our technology has created measurable change:

• Connected 📱: 1.7 million first-time mobile internet users connected.
• Prosperous 💰: 62% of customers use M-KOPA smartphones for income generation, with 30,000+ livelihoods created for agents.

• Green 🌱: 2.1 million tonnes of CO2 avoided through clean energy products, with over 100,000 circular economy products provided.

  Why M-KOPA?

  At M-KOPA, we empower our people to own their careers through diverse development programs, coaching partnerships, and on-the-job training. We support individual journeys with family-friendly policies, prioritize well-being, and embrace flexibility.

  Join us in shaping the future of M-KOPA as we grow together. Explore more at m-kopa.com.

  Recognized four times by the Financial Times as one of Africa's fastest growing companies (2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025) and by TIME100 Most influential companies in the world 2023 and 2024, we've served over 5 million customers, unlocking $1.5 billion in cumulative credit for the unbanked across Africa.

• Hands-on experience or Academic Publication in generative models (VAEs, GANs, diffusion models, or related methods)
• Advanced expertise in mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science
• Experience with deep learning, reinforcement learning, or specialised Machine Learning domains
• Experience with structured or unstructured data
• Proven ability to translate research into scalable algorithms
• Ideally a publication record in Machine Learning research (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI etc preferred)