Data Scientist Placement Student

Content moderation runs around the clock, with reviewers in multiple time zones and languages. Since 2009, the company has expanded from listings into payments, shipping and seller financing.

Overview

Millpond HQ is looking for a data science intern to help build and test prediction models for our Risk Modelling team. Remote position. Most of the team is in Nairobi, but nobody is required to come in. Normal working hours, Monday to Friday.

What you'll do

• Fine-tune small transformer models with Hugging Face for classification tasks.
• Document assumptions, data sources and results in Confluence or Notion.
• Package a trained model behind a simple FastAPI endpoint for testing.
• Label and review samples of training data to check quality.
• Evaluate models using precision, recall, AUC and other metrics that fit the problem.
• Engineer features from transaction, text or event data.
• Train baseline models with scikit-learn and compare them against simple rules.

Who can apply

• Currently enrolled in a bachelor's or master's degree, graduating between December 2027 and June 2028.
• Based in Kenya for the duration of the internship.
• Eligible to work in Kenya.
• Available for the full internship period.
• Laptop with 8 GB RAM or more and a stable internet connection (no GPU needed, we provide cloud compute)
• Available at least 30 hours a week, with some flexibility during exam weeks.
• Working knowledge of SQL.
• Pursuing a degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science or a related field, graduating in between December 2027 and June 2028.
• Strong Python, including pandas, NumPy and Matplotlib.
• Clear written English, since most discussions happen in docs and Slack threads.

Preferred

• Experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Exposure to SageMaker, Vertex AI or Databricks notebooks.
• Some work with LLM APIs, embeddings or retrieval.

What you'll learn

• Experiment tracking and reproducible notebooks, the way the team actually does it.
• How to judge whether a model is worth deploying, not just whether its accuracy is high.

Duration: 6 months

Start date: Feb 2027

Stipend: KES 40,000 - KES 46,000 a month

Perks

• Internet allowance.
• Possibility of a full-time offer.
• Flexible hours.
• Company laptop.
• Mentorship.

Duration: 6 months. Start: Feb 2027.

Demo job created on 11jobs for testing and demonstrations. It is not an actual opening at Millpond HQ.