Staff Data Scientist

Overview

We are seeking a Staff Data Scientist who is deeply curious about our product, our customers, and the employee relations data that sits at the heart of what we do. Reporting to the Director of Platform and Data Engineering, you will own the development of an authoritative, end-to-end understanding of our data: what it represents, how it's structured, where it's reliable, and what it can tell us about workplace issues at scale.

From that foundation, you'll build the analytical models and customer-facing data products that help organizations understand patterns in their employee relations (ER) programs and benchmark against industry peers. This is a high-impact role where genuine product curiosity isn't a nice-to-have; it's the prerequisite for doing the work well. You'll bring rigorous statistical thinking and strong engineering fundamentals to everything from building the models that power our product to presenting benchmark findings directly to customers.
About Us

At HR Acuity®, we empower our team to #BeBold -embracing innovation and new challenges. With the right tools, we help you #WorkSmarter , fostering collaboration so we can all be #BetterTogether . If you're excited about being part of our growth story, we'd love to chat!

HR Acuity® is the leading provider of employee relations case management and investigation software. We help organizations standardize how workplace issues are reported, documented, and investigated. Our data-driven approach to managing workplace issues helps our clients and partners build trusted, inclusive cultures where employees feel safe.

This is an #All-in Zone. We are a fast-growing, innovative company where being #All-in is the norm. From our female founder CEO to every team member, we embrace a fully engaged mindset. We strive for excellence every day, driven by our commitment to our mission and culture-and we welcome individuals who share our values.

At the same time, we are deeply committed to fostering an inclusive, diverse workplace where different perspectives are valued and respected. We believe in creating an environment where everyone can show up as their authentic selves and thrive. If this sounds like you, keep reading.

Click here to learn more about our values and benefits

Please note that for this position, we are only accepting direct applications. Submissions from agencies will not be considered.

The Opportunity

Data Understanding & Exploration

• Develop and continuously deepen a comprehensive understanding of HR Acuity's full data landscape, including case types, taxonomies, workflows, and customer segments, grounded in the real-world employee relations problems the data represents
• Assess what makes HR Acuity's dataset competitively distinctive, identify gaps or additions that would strengthen its analytical value, and proactively surface opportunities that extend beyond the current product roadmap
• Build rigorous documentation, lineage, and data quality baselines for HR Acuity's ER dataset, establishing the foundation the analytics product needs to grow on

Modeling & Analytics

• Design and build statistical models and machine learning solutions that surface trends, risk signals, and benchmarks from HR Acuity's employee relations case data, with rigorous attention to bias detection and mitigation given the sensitivity of the underlying data
• Apply NLP and text analytics techniques to extract structure, patterns, and signals from HR Acuity's unstructured case data, including case notes, investigation narratives, and incident descriptions; this includes building and improving anonymization pipelines for sensitive unstructured content, with a focus on preserving analytical value while protecting identity
• Own and elevate HR Acuity's customer-facing analytics and benchmarking capabilities: deepen their statistical rigor, expand the insights they deliver, and ensure they reflect the full analytical depth of the underlying dataset; this is the current core product, and making it more statistically meaningful and defensible is a primary responsibility of this role
• Design and execute experiments to measure the impact of product and analytical changes, applying rigorous statistical methods, including power analysis and significance testing, to feature evaluation and continuous improvement

Collaboration & Communication

• Collaborate with Data Engineering to ensure pipelines, schemas, and data models support analytical needs and maintain data quality
• Partner closely with Product and Engineering to define metrics, evaluate feature performance, and translate analytical findings into product decisions
• Translate complex analytical findings into clear, compelling narratives for non-technical stakeholders, including customers and internal leadership

AI/ML Quality & Governance

• Apply responsible data practices throughout all work, prioritizing privacy, fairness, and ethical handling of sensitive employee information
• Define and maintain the statistical evaluation framework for AI and ML features, including golden datasets, quality metrics, and release gates for data quality
• Contribute to technical approach decisions for AI features, bringing data-driven judgment on when classical ML, statistical models, or rules-based solutions are more appropriate than LLM-based approaches
• Serve as the statistical and data quality voice on LLM-powered features, evaluating whether AI-generated insights, summaries, and recommendations are statistically sound, appropriately calibrated, and meaningful for customers
• Review prompt designs and model outputs for accuracy, bias, and statistical validity, partnering with engineers to iterate before and after release
• Monitor model and data quality over time, identifying and addressing degradation, drift, or unexpected changes in underlying distributions

Leadership

• Establish data science standards, documentation practices, and reproducibility norms that scale as the team grows
• As the data science function grows, provide mentorship and technical guidance to junior practitioners, contributing to a culture of rigor and continuous learning

Qualifications

Who You Are as a Professional

You're genuinely curious about products and the problems they solve, not just the data itself. You want to understand why a customer opens a case, what an HR team is trying to figure out, and what "a good outcome" looks like in an employee investigation before you ever write a query. That product and domain curiosity is what makes your analysis trustworthy: you don't just report what the data says, you understand what it means.

You bring strong statistical foundations and practical engineering skills, and you know how to build fluency with a complex, sensitive dataset from the ground up. You're equally comfortable diving into an ambiguous data question, building a production-grade model, and walking a non-technical customer through what you found. You take accuracy seriously and explain your reasoning clearly.
Education

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Statistics, Data Science, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field - or equivalent practical experience

Core Data Science Experience

• 6+ years of experience in data science, applied statistics, or machine learning
• Proven track record building and deploying predictive models in production environments
• Comfortable establishing model lifecycle practices in greenfield environments, including experiment tracking, versioning, and drift monitoring

Technical Proficiency

• Strong Python skills across the data science ecosystem (pandas, scikit-learn, statsmodels, scipy, etc.)
• Solid SQL command with experience working with relational databases at scale
• Experience with Snowflake and cloud-based ELT patterns
• Azure experience preferred, particularly for model pipelines and container-based workloads (e.g., Kubernetes)
• Familiarity with dbt or similar transformation frameworks is a plus

NLP & Unstructured Text

• Demonstrated experience with unstructured text data, including NER, PII detection and anonymization pipelines, text classification, topic modeling, entity extraction, and embeddings
• Experience building or maintaining systems that consistently replace identifying information across large document corpora is strongly preferred

LLM Evaluation & AI Quality

• Experience evaluating LLM-powered features in production, including assessing AI-generated outputs for accuracy, calibration, and bias
• Familiarity with prompt review, golden dataset design, or model quality monitoring is strongly preferred

Experimentation & Analytics

• Proficiency in experiment design and A/B testing methodology, including power analysis, significance testing, and translating results into product decisions
• Experience building and communicating data-driven benchmarks, scorecards, or comparative analytics, ideally in a B2B or SaaS context

Privacy & Compliance

• Experience working with sensitive or compliance-adjacent data (HR, healthcare, legal, or financial) is strongly preferred
• Familiarity with privacy-preserving statistical methods for aggregate analytics
• Familiarity with statistical disclosure control techniques such as minimum cohort thresholds, suppression rules, and aggregation standards for sensitive data

Communication & Data Visualization

• Demonstrated ability to translate complex statistical concepts into clear, actionable narratives for varied audiences, in both written and visual formats
• Familiarity with data visualization tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Plotly, or Altair

Perks and Benefits

Compensation: The pay range for this position is expected to be between $170,000 to $190,000 however, base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized, non-discriminatory factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other incentive compensation opportunities in the form of discretionary annual bonus $178,000 to $198,000 OTE. Additionally, full-time employees are eligible to participate in our comprehensive benefits program, including health and wellness benefits, 401(k) retirement plan, life and disability insurance coverages, and other benefits the Company may offer from time to time.

Benefits:

• Stay healthy and happy with our comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans.
  • You can also choose from FSA or HSA options to suit your needs.
• Save for your future with our 401K plan that matches your contributions.
• Enjoy paid leave for various life events, such as sickness, disability, or parenthood.
• Own a piece of the company with our #Allin Shares Program.
• Company paid holidays, birthday day off, closed 4th of July week and December holiday week and 8 hours of volunteer time.
• Half day summer Fridays* and half day first Fridays* to catch up on work, personal development, or an afternoon off.

Perks:

• Take a break from work with our unlimited PTO policy to refresh and recharge.
• Company paid holidays, birthday day off, closed 4th of July week and December holiday week, half day summer Fridays* and half day first Fridays*, and 8 hours of volunteer time.
• Own a piece of the company with our #Allin Shares Program.
• Earn extra cash by referring qualified candidates to join our team.
• Access professional and personal support through our employee assistance program.
• Work from anywhere with our remote work environment that fosters collaboration and creativity. *
• Join a fun and energetic team that values your suggestions and new ideas.
• Receive a competitive salary and meaningful opportunities for growth.

Learning and Development

• Onboarding: Learn the basics of your role, the company culture, and the expectations from your manager and team. Get familiar with the tools, systems, and processes that you will use in your daily work. Receive feedback and guidance from your mentor and peers.
• Manager training: Develop the skills and competencies to lead, motivate, and empower your team. Learn how to communicate effectively, delegate tasks, set goals, provide feedback, and resolve conflicts. Enhance your emotional intelligence, coaching, and mentoring abilities.
• Leadership training : Grow your leadership potential and influence within the organization. Learn how to inspire and align others with the company vision, mission, and values. Strengthen your strategic thinking, decision making, and problem-solving skills. Expand your network and collaboration with other leaders across functions and levels.
• Industry training : Stay updated on the latest trends, best practices, and innovations in the Employee Relations industry. Gain insights from experts and thought leaders in the field. Apply your learning to improve your performance, quality, and efficiency.

* Based upon business needs