Making the most out of Open Finance data is our priority at Belvo, and we count on the work of our Data Scientists to do so.
By creating algorithms and interpreting data, we can develop enrichment tools that help our customers extract valuable insight from raw data and turn it into better solutions for their customers, from unlocking credit to driving better financial decisions with the help of Personal Finance Management products.
Maria, a Data Science Associate on the Enrichment team, started at the company as an intern in 2020 and is now helping the team grow our enrichment solutions. She shares a bit about her days at Belvo and her team’s work.
- What do you do at Belvo?
I am a Data Science Associate. I work with my team, Enrichment, to develop algorithms that can extract knowledge from the data, which is not provided in an aggregated or direct way. For example, we have algorithms that categorize transactions, detect recurrent income and/or expenses, etc.
I am a Junior, so what I mostly do here is learn while I have fun with my team and apply all the knowledge I acquired in college in order to achieve all our goals and objectives as a squad and as a company.
- Can you describe your team’s mission and day-to-day responsibilities?
Our mission is to help our customers unlock credit and drive smarter financial behavior. That is accomplished through our enrichment solutions that provide value to the data in an intelligent way throughout our algorithms.
We collaborate with many teams, as most developers do. For example, we also work with Product so that our solutions have a market fit, we collaborate with Customer Success to help clients that might want to categorize a specific transaction in a specific way so we adapt our algorithms… We are quite hybrid in that way.
- What is the tech stack that your team uses?
We code in Python and our web framework is Django.
- How is it working in your team?
We are a cohesive and multidisciplinary team in which everyone provides their own perspective and contributions. We normally have one meeting a day in which we comment on what we are currently working on, but we also schedule meetings to compare results of feature investigations, organize the sprint, etc.
And of course, if anyone needs help we just jump into a call so we can unblock each other and learn different perspectives.
- Where’s your team located and how do you sync with them?
We are quite a distributed team! Right now there are four of us in Spain but located in Madrid, Barcelona, and Mallorca; and two of us in Brazil, located in Recife and Campinas.
This arrangement allows you to work with really brilliant and capable professionals no matter the place you are located, you not only learn from amazing people but also from their cultures and lives.
On the other hand, you have to adapt to different time zones, but as long as the communication within the team is good, there is no problem with that. For that, we count on tools and methodologies that allow us to have synchronous and asynchronous communication.
- How do you bond with your team?
Even though we are not physically together, our team has a good bond: we have remote coffees with each other, and we have a reserved slot of time once in a while just to chat or play some game together… I am personally the team queen of Pictionary, so you see at Belvo it is completely true that we are fun lovers.
- What is the company perk that you like the most?
Definitely WFAO (Work From Any Office). I think traveling is my top favorite (and most expensive) hobby. Being able to go to other places in the world to meet your teammates, people you have worked with online but never seen in real life while you do your job, and enjoy the pleasures of traveling at the same time is definitely something I really appreciate and am fond of.
- Where do you see yourself in 3 years?
I want to explore all the possibilities, so right now I cannot decide if I want to be a manager or an individual contributor in the long term. However, I do know that I definitely want to keep working on Data Science and Machine Learning.
In addition, I’d like to see more women in all the technology fields. Currently, we are working towards a more balanced and equal workplace, and I hope in three years I will be working side by side with more women and don’t feel the gap.
Learn more about working at Belvo and check out our current openings.
