P

Parafin

Embedded financing infrastructure for platforms

Data Scientist

Full-TimeUpdated on 10/23/2026
$200k - $330k+ Equity grant
Mid
Bachelor's
San Francisco, CA, USA
Hybrid
Data & AnalyticsData Science

About the job

Requirements
  • A bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science, or a related field.
  • Use critical, intellectually honest statistical reasoning and design concise metrics that guide decision-making.
  • Use robust causal inference methods and develop valid, predictive machine learning models.
  • Identify and prioritize business problems and solve them using appropriate data science techniques.
  • Anticipate the impact of work on financial performance, customers, and compliance obligations.
  • Write legible, reliable, tested code; build or source tools to improve team efficiency; and contribute to model and data infrastructure design.
  • Build trusted stakeholder relationships, document work, seek feedback, and share learnings proactively.
  • Prioritize high-impact work, scope projects rigorously, and act with urgency.
  • Rapidly learn and adopt emerging AI tools and workflows, and critically evaluate AI-generated outputs for accuracy and reliability.
Responsibilities
  • Lead projects end to end, learn and apply methods across diverse business areas, and implement solutions robustly.
  • Develop expertise in specific business areas and take on projects across domains as priorities evolve.
  • Design experiments and analyses that expand access to capital while maintaining portfolio health.
  • Study the merchant lifecycle to identify opportunities to responsibly extend more capital.
  • Model prospective partner portfolio performance to size opportunities before launch.
  • Build and ship machine learning models to forecast merchant repayment behavior, from feature engineering through production deployment, to inform pricing and offer sizing.
  • Measure the effectiveness of servicing efforts, including balance recovery and interventions that improve outcomes.
  • Build data pipelines that power company analyses, dashboards, and machine learning models.
  • Automate processes such as lien filings, KYC checks, and fraud screens using APIs, machine learning, and large language models.
  • Build internal tools such as Streamlit applications, dashboards, and Slack bots.
  • Recruit exceptional talent, improve team tools, and support teammates through regular seminars and project reviews.
  • Mentor other data science team members.
Desired Qualifications
  • Management experience.

About the company

P

Parafin

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Parafin provides embedded financing for online platforms and their merchant partners, offering a white-label financing infrastructure. It handles underwriting, funding, servicing, compliance, and support so platforms can offer capital to merchants under their own brand. The financing uses a merchant’s sales history with no interest, late fees, or credit checks; repayments are automated and vary with sales, with funds available in as little as one business day, and loans issued by Celtic Bank. Parafin differentiates itself with a full-service, white-label approach and partnerships with major platforms like Amazon, MindBody, and DoorDash, aiming to help platforms grow revenue and strengthen merchant loyalty.

Company Size

51-200

Company Stage

Debt Financing

Total Funding

$765M

Headquarters

San Francisco, California

Founded

2020

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Stripe agreed to acquire Parafin on September 30, 2026, signaling strategic validation.
  • Parafin added Tekion’s automotive dealerships on September 10, 2026, expanding vertical reach.
  • Goldman Sachs backed Parafin with new capacity on June 17, 2026, funding growth.

What critics are saying

  • Stripe must clear regulators before closing; integration risk runs through 2027.
  • Standalone Parafin jobs disappear after acquisition, crushing employer identity and decision-making autonomy.
  • Stripe Capital can absorb Parafin’s products, making Parafin’s brand existentially temporary.

What makes Parafin unique

  • Parafin underwrites from platform sales data, not owner credit scores.
  • Its embedded lending stack handles underwriting, servicing, compliance, and support end-to-end.
  • Stripe’s acquisition validates Parafin’s distribution moat across Amazon, DoorDash, Gusto, and Walmart.

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Benefits

  • Competitive salary & equity
  • Health, dental, & vision
  • 401k plan
  • Parental leave
  • Unlimited PTO
  • Commuter benefits
  • Daily lunches

Growth & Insights and Company News

6 month growth

-1%

1 year growth

-2%

2 year growth

-4%
FunderIntel
Sep 30th, 2026
Stripe is buying Parafin - Embedded SMB lending just consolidated at the top.

Stripe is buying Parafin - Embedded SMB lending just consolidated at the top. 5 hours ago The biggest name in payments is buying one of the biggest names in embedded small-business lending. Stripe and Parafin announced an acquisition agreement today, September 30, just over a month after Stripe abandoned its pursuit to buy PayPal. The price was not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close in the coming months pending regulatory clearance. Parafin says its products, financing terms, and existing offers will not change, and the team is joining Stripe. Parafin was founded in 2020 by three former Robinhood employees, CEO Sahill Poddar, Vineet Goel, and Ralph Furman, and put out its first cash advance in 2021. Six years later, the San Francisco company has pushed more than $3 billion to over 60,000 small businesses, and it did it without a sales team, a broker channel, or a storefront. Parafin's capital shows up inside software merchants already use: the DoorDash dashboard, the Amazon seller portal, Gusto, SpotOn, Fullsteam, Jobber, and dozens of other platforms. Because the platform already sees the merchant's sales, Parafin underwrites off real revenue data rather than the owner's credit score, and the offer arrives pre-approved. The model carried Parafin to a $100 million Series C in late 2024 and the No. 357 spot on this year's Inc. 5000. Stripe, through Stripe Capital, has been advancing funds since 2019, and the company says businesses that use it grow measurably faster than those that don't. But Stripe Capital has one structural limit: it can only reach businesses that process payments on Stripe's own rails. Parafin is the answer to that limit. Its partner network reaches merchants wherever they sell, which means Stripe just bought distribution into storefronts it never processed a dollar for. Pair that with Stripe's fifteen years of payments infrastructure, its 18,000-plus platform builders, and a private valuation that hit $159 billion in its February tender offer, and the strategic logic writes itself. The honest read is that one of the deepest-pocketed fintechs on the planet just committed to owning a large part of the SMB financing market. They will expand the embedded lending market by meeting more small-business borrowers at the exact moment they're looking at their own sales dashboards. Bank full approval rates for small-business loans fell from 59% in 2015 to 42% in 2025, and that gap is the market everyone in this industry works. Embedded platforms have been quietly absorbing the small-file end of it for years; a merchant who accepts a pre-approved offer inside DoorDash never calls a broker, never fills out an application, and never appears in anyone's lead funnel. What embedded offers still don't do is structure: multi-platform revenue, larger files, consolidation, term debt, SBA. That remains the ground where a human who can shop the whole market earns the deal. And then there's the longer game. Stripe has stayed private longer than almost any company its size, using tender offers to give employees liquidity while its valuation climbed. Deals like this one, buying growth engines rather than renting them, read like a company building toward something bigger. If an S-1 ever drops, plenty of people in this industry who have watched Stripe absorb the infrastructure of small-business finance will find it hard to sit out. That's an observation about sentiment, not investment advice. Funder Intel LLC.'ll have more as the deal moves toward closing, including what it means for Parafin's platform partners and whether Stripe extends Parafin's products to its own platform builders. Follow the full deal history in its M&A Tracker.

Inc.
Sep 30th, 2026
Stripe buys Parafin after it financed 60,000 small businesses with $3B

Stripe is acquiring Parafin, a fintech startup that has provided $3 billion in financing to 60,000 small businesses. Parafin offers embedded financing solutions through major platforms including DoorDash and Amazon. The acquisition strengthens Stripe's position in the small business lending market. Parafin's technology enables platforms to offer capital directly to merchants and service providers within their ecosystems, streamlining access to funding. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The move represents Stripe's continued expansion beyond its core payments business into adjacent financial services for businesses.

FinTech Global
Sep 11th, 2026
Parafin expands embedded finance with Tekion partnership.

Parafin expands embedded finance with Tekion partnership. September 11, 2026 Parafin, an embedded finance company, has partnered with Tekion to bring flexible B2B financing directly into the automotive technology provider's dealer platform. The partnership will see Parafin's Pay Over Time product embedded into Tekion Pay, allowing dealerships to split business invoices into biweekly instalments rather than paying upfront. The move highlights how embedded finance is expanding beyond traditional consumer payments, with vertical software platforms increasingly integrating lending and payment products directly into their workflows. Dealership customers can choose between Pay-in-4, Pay-in-8 and Pay-in-12 options, with approval decisions delivered within seconds. Rather than relying on an owner's personal credit history, Parafin assesses eligibility using business cash flow and transaction data. Customers can therefore access financing without a credit bureau check or personal guarantee. The product is designed to help businesses preserve working capital while managing supplier and operational costs, with the financing offered alongside existing ACH and card payment options within Tekion Pay. Parafin provides financial infrastructure that enables software platforms to offer products including financing and payments to their business customers. The company handles areas including underwriting, servicing, compliance and support, and has deployed its technology across platforms including Amazon, Gusto and DoorDash. The partnership with Tekion adds another vertical to Parafin's embedded finance strategy, placing financing directly within software already used by automotive retailers rather than requiring businesses to seek funding through a separate financial provider. Parafin CEO Sahill Poddar said, "The way businesses pay each other hasn't kept pace with the rest of commerce. Consumers have come to expect flexible payment options at checkout, but businesses are still navigating invoices, net terms, and manual financing. Together with Tekion, we're bringing that same modern experience to B2B." Tekion Senior Director and GM of Fintech Jamie Fox added, "Our mission is to connect every part of the automotive retail ecosystem - from dealer workflows to vendor payments. By embedding Parafin Pay Over Time directly into Tekion Pay, we're making it possible for dealers to accelerate cash flow while giving their vendors the flexibility they already expect. It's a win for everyone." Enjoying the stories? Investors. The following investor(s) were tagged in this article.

Yahoo Finance
Sep 10th, 2026
Parafin and Tekion launch B2B buy now, pay later for automotive dealerships

Parafin and Tekion have launched Pay Over Time, a B2B buy now, pay later solution for dealership business customers. The service is embedded in Tekion's Automotive Retail Cloud platform via Tekion Pay. Pay Over Time allows businesses to split invoices into biweekly installments with instant approval at checkout. Business buyers can choose Pay-in-4, Pay-in-8, or Pay-in-12 payment plans. The service uses cash flow data from linked business bank accounts for underwriting, rather than personal credit scores. This approach enables approval of businesses that traditional financing might overlook. No credit bureau pull or personal guarantee is required. The solution addresses a gap in B2B payments, where businesses typically must either pay upfront or negotiate slow-to-establish net terms with suppliers.

Parafin
Aug 25th, 2026
Parafin powers SpotOn Capital, bringing improved underwriting and lower financing costs.

Parafin powers SpotOn Capital, bringing improved underwriting and lower financing costs. Team Parafin Parafin, a financial infrastructure company for embedded lending, today announced that its underwriting and capital platform now powers SpotOn Capital, the financing program built into SpotOn's restaurant and financial technology platform. The partnership gives eligible restaurant operators better access to financing, lower costs, and faster funding. Operators who refinanced with SpotOn Capital in partnership with Parafin offers paid 35% less on average for their financing than under their previous programs.* One operator reduced its monthly payments by nearly 50% after switching to SpotOn Capital. "The needs of platforms and their customers change over time, and their financial products should be able to change with them," said Sahill Poddar, Co-founder and CEO of Parafin. "SpotOn saw an opportunity to improve its capital program for restaurant operators, and we're proud to help them deliver lower costs, broader access, and a program that can continue to evolve." SpotOn completed the migration to Parafin in two months, with no change to how merchants apply for or manage financing. Beyond handling underwriting and capital disbursement, Parafin also manages servicing, compliance, and program operations. Parafin's AI-powered underwriting model evaluates restaurant revenue and overall business performance, rather than relying primarily on personal credit scores, making financing accessible to operators that traditional lenders overlook. This gives companies like SpotOn the infrastructure to launch, operate, and evolve lending programs without building those capabilities in-house. "For restaurant operators, financing has always come with too many trade-offs: slow approvals, rigid terms, and underwriting that doesn't account for how a restaurant actually runs," said Doron Friedman, Chief Innovation Officer at SpotOn. "By partnering with Parafin, SpotOn Capital looks at real business performance, not just a credit score. That means more operators qualify, get better terms, and can get access to funding faster." SpotOn Capital is available now to eligible businesses through the SpotOn dashboard. To learn more, visit spoton.com/solutions/capital. *Based on SpotOn internal data. Reflects operators who refinanced from their prior capital program into SpotOn Capital during 2025-2026. The 35% average reflects total cost of financing under SpotOn Capital compared to each operator's prior financing program. Individual savings vary by business performance, financing product, and offer terms. About Parafin Parafin is a financial infrastructure company that provides platforms with embedded financial products for their small businesses by abstracting the complexity of capital markets, underwriting, servicing, compliance, and customer support. By powering the embedded financial services of merchant platforms, small businesses can run and grow themselves despite uncertain economic conditions. In just a few years, Parafin has launched on Amazon, Gusto, and more platforms to serve hundreds of thousands of businesses and extended over $35 billion in offers. About SpotOn SpotOn is a leading restaurant and financial technology company that helps operators run smarter, more profitable businesses. Known for its flexible, cloud-based restaurant management system and 24/7 support, SpotOn offers a complete point-of-sale with online ordering and reservations, labor management, AI-powered P&L analysis, and access to best-in-class integrations. SpotOn builds restaurant technology designed for peace of mind and delivers it with hospitality. For more information, visit www.spoton.com All loans are issued by Celtic Bank. All loans and offers are subject to credit approval, identity verification, and periodic review, and may change without notice. Bank transfers are subject to review.