Principal Data & AI Scientist

Job Description

Who We Are:

At PEMCO we're all about people - our customers, our employees, and the community. We're a mutual insurance company owned by our Northwest policyholders. We provide auto, home, renters, and boat coverage. Recognized by Forbes as one of America's Best Insurance Companies in both Auto and Home for 2025, based on customer survey feedback, and by Newsweek as one of America's Greatest Midsize Workplaces 2025. We are consistently recognized for our outstanding customer service, employee expertise, community partnerships, and social impact programs. All of which makes PEMCO a great place to work!

Our social impact programs motivate high achievement by youth in education; build stronger and greener communities; and increase safety at home, on the road, and at play. We're committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and to fostering an inspiring and inclusive workplace. These efforts create and cultivate an environment that builds fairness and understanding, encourages collaboration and flexibility, and celebrates all the ways in which we're different and the same - enabling all individuals to achieve their full potential.

Why We Need You:

We are seeking a Principal Data Scientist to lead the design, development, and deployment of advanced analytics and machine learning solutions across our insurance portfolio. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an experienced data scientist who can translate ambiguous business problems into scalable, production-ready models that drive measurable impact.

As a Principal Data Scientist, you will operate as a trusted technical advisor to senior leadership, set modeling and experimentation standards, mentor senior and staff-level data scientists, and influence the company's long-term data and AI strategy.


What You'll Be Doing:

Technical Leadership & Modeling

• Lead the development of advanced statistical and machine learning models across core insurance domains such as:
  • Pricing and rating
  • Underwriting and risk selection
  • Claims severity, frequency, and fraud detection
  • Customer lifetime value, retention, and growth
• Design end-to-end analytical solutions, from problem formulation and feature engineering to model deployment and monitoring.
• Champion best practices in model validation, explainability, fairness, and performance monitoring, aligned with regulatory and ethical standards.
• Evaluate and select appropriate modeling techniques (e.g., GLMs, gradient boosting, deep learning, survival analysis, Bayesian methods) based on business context.

Strategic Influence

• Partner with executives, product leaders, and actuarial teams to shape analytics strategy and identify high-impact opportunities.
• Translate complex analytical findings into clear, actionable insights for both technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Influence roadmap decisions by quantifying business impact, risk, and uncertainty.

Platform & Production Excellence

• Collaborate closely with data engineering and ML platform teams to ensure models are productionized effectively and maintained at scale.
• Define and promote standards for model reproducibility, documentation, testing, and lifecycle management.
• Contribute to the evolution of internal data science tooling, experimentation frameworks, and ML infrastructure.

Mentorship & Culture

• Serve as a technical mentor and role model for emerging data scientists.
• Raise the bar for analytical rigor, code quality, and scientific thinking across the organization.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and evidence-based decision-making.
• Demonstrate behaviors consistent with PEMCO's policies, values, code of ethics, and business conduct.
• Authentically support the PEMCO Brand and constantly are on the lookout for top talent to join us to achieve our Mission to Worry Less and Live More.
• Other duties as assigned.

What You'll Bring:

• B.A. or B.S. degree or equivalent work experience in a related field, such as Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, or Data Engineering.
• Master's degree or Ph.D. in a related field, such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or Machine Learning preferred.
• 10 years of enterprise-scale experience in designing, implementing, and deploying AI/ML models.
• 7 years of experience working with cloud-based AI platforms, including Azure Machine Learning, Databricks, and Snowflake.
• 7 years of experience in implementing both supervised and unsupervised learning techniques in real-world applications.
• Experience in the insurance industry, particularly in Auto, Home, and Umbrella insurance processes, underwriting, claims analysis, and risk assessment is required.
• Experience working with advanced AI frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, and Hugging Face transformers is preferred.
• Hands-on experience with Gen AI, RAG pipelines, Vector Databases, and Knowledge Graphs.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a deep understanding of statistical and mathematical principles.
• Strong experience in natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI applications.
• Expertise in MLOps, model lifecycle management, and AI model deployment at scale.
• Proficient in Python, PySpark, and SQL.
• Deep understanding of Azure Databricks, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Data Factory.
• Experience with distributed model training and serving on Databricks
• Familiarity with Azure OpenAI, LLM fine-tuning, or cognitive services is preferred.
• Expertise in both supervised and unsupervised learning techniques and the ability to implement AI/ML solutions that enhance data-driven decision-making in the insurance industry, particularly in Auto, Home, and Umbrella insurance.
• Familiarity with agile software delivery methodologies such as Scrum.

Compensation:

The pay range for this role is shown below. Compensation decisions are determined based on an individual's qualifications, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

• Greater Seattle area target pay range: $187,363 - $228,999. The full pay range is $156,136 - $260,226
• Outside greater Seattle area target pay range: $165,352 - $202,096. The full pay range is $137,793 - $229,655.

Greater Seattle Area is defined as working within approximately 100 miles of Seattle.

Outside Greater Seattle is defined as working more than 100 miles from Seattle.

Benefits:

Regular part-time PEMCO employees working at least 24 hours per week and regular full-time PEMCO employees are eligible to elect coverage under medical, dental, and vision plans for themselves and their eligible family members with generous employer premium cost shares. In addition, as a benefits-eligible employee, you are:

• covered by employer-paid basic life and accidental death & dismemberment insurance policies as well as long- and short-term disability benefit coverages.
• eligible to participate in PEMCO's 401(k) plan which includes a generous employer match (2 for 1 on the first 6% employee pre-tax and/or Roth deferral, up to federal maximums).

PEMCO provides the following paid leave programs for benefits-eligible employees in their first year of PEMCO employment:

• Vacation accrues at a minimum rate of 10 days for new hires, and increases based on a schedule to a maximum annual accrual of 25 days based on tenure.
• Granted four (4) floating holidays immediately upon hire.
• Paid holidays for the eight (8) holidays observed by PEMCO throughout the calendar year.
• Granted up to ten (10) days of sick leave immediately upon hire (pro-rated based on hire date and full-time/part-time status), which is approximately 28 hours more per year than the Washington state-required accrual.
• In addition, PEMCO provides paid time off for bereavement, jury duty, and employee volunteering in the community.

Other miscellaneous benefit programs offered by PEMCO include:

• Flexible Spending Accounts.
• Education Assistance Program after one year of service.
• Scholarship program for children of PEMCO employees after one year of service.
• Employee Assistance Program.
• Well-being program.
• Discretionary taxable gifts and gift cards.
• And other Perks & Benefits, including discounts on computer software and hardware, cell phone plans, and rental cars.

Other compensation depending on role, contributions, and performance may include:

• Discretionary bonuses.
• Tiered sales commissions and/or incentives (from 5-25% of employee's monthly sales).
• Employee referral bonuses.
• Shift differential pay.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

At PEMCO, we celebrate and support our differences. We know employing a team rich in diverse thoughts, experiences, and opinions allows our employees, our products, and our community to flourish. PEMCO is honored to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, or veteran status.

Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws:

• Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
• Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)
• Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA)