Senior Data Science Analyst at Discover Financial Services

May 26, 2021 9 Comments

Anyone working at Discover Financial Services?
How is the given role? How is the management? How is the work life balance in the Analytics department?

How is the tech stack? Is the analytics heavily done on Excel? Growth opportunities? After how many years is the promotion observed to a lead data science analyst?

How does the salary and role compare to other fintech companies? Do they care about employee well being - winter shutdowns, no meeting days, company swag etc?

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TOP 9 Comments
  • I am a Principal Data Scientist and I started at the same rank <2 years ago. But here is my take.

    Management is good. Co-operative and attentive. They make an effort to understand your priorities and career goals etc.

    WLB is great. 9-to-5 is almost always true. May go either ways few weeks in a year.

    Tech stack depends on you and the problem you're trying to sokve. Excel, SQL, Python, H2O.

    Growth opportunities are decent, a promotion every 2-3 years is what I usually see with others.

    Salary is quite good for Riverwoods, IL but not as good as big tech and fintech in valley. On a value per effort scale and the cost of living considered - definitely above average.

    They do care about employee well-being.
    There are no meeting days. A new thing firm-wide. Some departments used to do this before.
    Not much of company swag. You get Bravos that you can use to purchase stuff, takes a while to rack-up those bravo points.

    There's no winter shutdown officially. But pre-covid era, people used to take their PTOs around this time. Managers usually are advised to make sure there is some representation in the team during that time and not everyone goes on PTO at the same time.
    May 27, 2021 2
    • Discover Financial Services
      inprogress

      Go to company page Discover Financial Services

      BIO
      Live and breathe all things Data! A good read, cup of coffee and new things I can learn keep me going. Big on podcasts, dance and staying alive!
      inprogress
      Great points! I’d like to add that discover does provide summer hours which is basically taking half the day off by putting in an hour extra on other 4 days of the week.

      Overall the culture is pretty great. Some teams do more interesting work than others. Good thing is networking and moving internally is highly encouraged at Discover.
      May 27, 2021
    • Yep, good point.
      I feel like I'm cheating when I take these summer hours and winter hours 😂 just a psychological thing.
      But mostly because of my prior firms. I used to work 60 hrs a week on an avg before.
      May 27, 2021
  • Depends on the type of business.
    Yes to most of them
    No to Excel
    Promotion- min 1 year if you exceed expectations

    What’s your YOE? TC?
    May 27, 2021 1
  • Discover Financial Services
    inprogress

    Go to company page Discover Financial Services

    BIO
    Live and breathe all things Data! A good read, cup of coffee and new things I can learn keep me going. Big on podcasts, dance and staying alive!
    inprogress
    I agree with most points made above. Analytics is done mostly using SQL. We’ve now moved to a cloud setup so lot of folks also use Python. Earlier SAS was the only option. I think from an analytics tech stack perspective discover is pretty much where most other financial services firms are
    May 27, 2021 1
  • Salary May be on the lower side compared to others. Work life balance depends on the team but overall it’s pretty great and you will be taken care as an employee. Discover takes care of its employees. Culture is pretty great. Discover also encourages internal movements and there will be growth opportunities
    May 27, 2021 0