fb.Fernando Barbosa

The experience behind the work.

A chronological view of my work across agriculture, telecom, banking, retail, fintech, industry and financial decision systems.

FICO

Lead Scientist

2025–Present

I help financial institutions and fintechs translate AI requirements into solution designs, working alongside customer teams on technology evaluation and architecture.

Credit underwritingCredit limit managementSolution architecture
30+ institutions · 10 products

Customer solution design

Connecting customer objectives with what the technology can achieve and how it can be applied.

3 ongoing proofs of value

Technology in practice

Working alongside customer teams on AI evaluation, architecture and financial decision use cases.

Focused Language Models

FICO FLM proofs of value

Working with customers on language-model proofs of value, translating financial-services requirements into evaluation plans and solution architectures using FICO FLM.

Transaction intelligence

Real-time fraud use cases

Customer-facing work on foundation-model applications to high-frequency, real-time transaction fraud, connecting model capabilities with customer data and decision requirements.

International collaboration

Across markets and cultures

Collaboration across Latin America, Australia, India, Malaysia, Europe and the UK.

These figures describe the scope of customer work, rather than booked revenue or completed deployments.

IFF

Data Scientist

2022–2025

I led approximately eight project contributors across two global programs, taking responsibility for infrastructure, architectural choices and cloud implementation.

Hierarchical forecastingOptimizationCloud architecture
5 contributors

BioActives optimization

A live configuration-as-software tool for simulating scenarios in global production.

10+ releasesWith user acceptance testing and coordinated delivery.

3 contributors

Cellulosics forecasting ↗

Hierarchical forecasts updated daily to give the global business more frequent visibility.

44,000+ test cases

Automated analysis with ML-driven vendor risk models, alongside the optimization and forecasting programs.

Cora

Data Scientist

2021–2022

I helped build Cora’s credit-card portfolio from the ground up, engineering the end-to-end underwriting pipeline and the analytical foundations for credit decisions and portfolio monitoring.

Credit-card underwritingApache PinotKafkaData infrastructureA/B testing
01

Credit from the ground up

Designed and deployed the underwriting pipeline, connecting credit assessment with operational execution and default monitoring. The work combined credit modeling with the engineering needed to make decisions usable in a growing product.

02

Real-time analytics engineering

Built a real-time analytics prototype with Apache Pinot and Kafka, working with engineering teams on infrastructure and monitoring. This was hands-on exploration of streaming data and analytical serving for operational decisions.

03

Experimentation and acquisition

Designed and analyzed A/B tests and applied statistical inference to customer-acquisition questions, collaborating with engineering and product teams to turn analytical findings into decisions.

Nike via Fisia · Grupo SBFGrupo SBF

Data Scientist III

2021

At Grupo SBF, I combined recommendation and search modeling, online experimentation and large-scale data processing to improve the digital retail experience.

Recommendations & searchOnline experimentationBigQuery
Discovery & recommendations

Association rules and search

Developed modified association-rule models and search algorithms with Python, GCP and BigQuery, connecting analytical models to product discovery.

Experimentation

Checkout experience

Implemented and analyzed online experiments on checkout pages, with a 15% increase in conversion reported in my OfferFit CV.

100M+ records

BigQuery at retail scale

Processed over 100 million records in BigQuery and worked on query performance and search functionality.

Scope documented in my OfferFit CV. The record count describes data processed, not unique customers.

Grupo SBF brings together Centauro and Fisia, Nike’s official distributor in Brazil. These brands describe the group context; my employment was with Grupo SBF.

Part of Dotz since 2022Noverde · Dotz

Data Science Specialist

2019–2021

I designed and developed Xper, MLflow-based experimentation software that brought dataset discovery, preparation, feature engineering, tuning and validation into one workflow across credit products.

MLflowCredit scoringMLOpsCredit Suite
−15%

Acquisition cost

Developed and deployed the first model for the top of the customer-acquisition funnel, reducing acquisition cost by 15% while maintaining the approval rate and origination.

Hours

Xper ↗

Designed an experimentation platform that shortened model building, making it possible to obtain a model and its validations within a few hours.

−35%

Delinquency

Implemented more than five credit models, achieving a 35% reduction in delinquency while maintaining the approval rate.

100%

Production model ownership

Responsible for maintenance and deployment of all production credit-origination models.

Built Credit Suite services for eligibility, features, labeling and monitoring, alongside ETL workflows supporting a R$2.5M monthly lending portfolio.

My role was at Noverde in 2019–2021. Dotz acquired Noverde in 2022.

Banco Votorantim

Data Scientist

2017–2019

At Banco Votorantim, I combined predictive modeling with practical data engineering for customer retention and write-off collections. My work covered the full path from target definition and feature design to reusable pipelines and model deployment.

RPythonPySparkPostgreSQLFeature engineeringModel deployment
01

Churn models built for iteration and deployment

Created modular R scripts with database connections and reusable functions for data preparation, feature engineering and target sampling. This structure let me adapt model inputs, compare hypotheses and deploy models within the bank’s developing analytics infrastructure.

02

Feature engineering for write-off collections

Developed predictive models for write-off collection strategies, using feature creation and selection both before and during training. The work focused on extracting useful signals from financial data to support recovery decisions.

03

Data pipelines that supported the models

Built data-integration and ETL workflows with PySpark and PostgreSQL, alongside R and Python modeling work. These pipelines supported preparation of transactional data for collection and customer-retention analysis.

Nextel Brasil

Data Scientist

2017

I developed Favorites, a graph-based churn model investigating how an influential customer's departure changes risk signals in their close network.

Graph modelingChurn predictionNetworkX

The work drew on message-passing intuition, contagion mathematics and probabilistic graphical models. I used NetworkX and experimented with graph databases and visualization.

My recalled historical ROC-AUC is approximately 0.80–0.85. The original evaluation artifacts are unavailable. The public demonstration uses synthetic data and does not reproduce that result.

Monsanto · Bayer

Customer Insights Analyst

2014–2016

Product Management Intern · 2014–2015
Customer Insights Analyst · 2015–2016

Text analyticsStatistical forecastingCustomer insights

While still a Product Management Intern at Monsanto, I initiated a simple NLP approach to producers’ and customers’ NPS responses. I used word counts and text-similarity analysis to surface relevant relationships in open-ended feedback.

My reports helped marketing understand what customers were reporting, including tone, slang and regional language across Monsanto’s corn, soybean and cotton businesses and their brands.

Explore the customer-language case study ↗

Developed statistical forecasts and customer-insight tools using R, SQL and VBA; analyzed Portuguese NPS feedback and improved reporting and data collection for agricultural decisions.

My role was at Monsanto in 2014–2016. Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018.

Economics & International Trade

PUC-SP · São Paulo · 2011–2015

Undergraduate research and final thesis on foreign direct investment in Brazil. Honorable mention at PUC-SP in 2013.

Explore the FDI research ↗

A career is built with people.

Fernando at Noverde’s third anniversary
Noverde · 2019 / A chapter in credit and behavioral modeling.
Fernando with colleagues at Noverde in 2019
Noverde · 2019 / Celebrating the company’s third anniversary with colleagues.
Fernando at his UNICAMP thesis defense
UNICAMP · 2023 / Master’s thesis defense in Digital Agriculture.