Director, Data Science

Role Description

We are seeking a hands-on Director of Data Science to provide the technical leadership, organizational alignment, and product-oriented execution needed to advance our AI strategy. This leader will help mature the Data Science function, clarify ownership, and ensure AI and machine learning investments translate into reliable, meaningful product outcomes.

You will spend roughly 60% of your time hands-on and 40% leading a small, high-performing team.

What you’ll be doing…

• Technical Leadership & Delivery:
  • Architect complex data science, machine learning, and agentic AI systems end to end, from foundational capabilities through production deployment.
  • Personally build, validate, and deploy high-complexity predictive models and machine learning solutions that solve core business and customer problems.
  • Define enterprise-level best practices for AI/ML systems, experimentation, governance, model lifecycle management, observability, and responsible AI.
  • Bring technical leadership and decision ownership to ambiguous problems.
  • Establish practical guardrails for AI capabilities.
• Cross-Team Influence & Architecture:
  • Partner with Product, Engineering, UX, and senior leadership to ensure Data Science work is integrated into the broader product strategy and roadmap.
  • Clarify the Data Science charter across research, modeling, productization, and execution.
  • Translate business needs, customer problems, and product goals into a coherent Data Science agenda.
  • Architect shared AI capabilities, frameworks, and standards.
  • Improve collaboration, documentation, handoffs, and end-to-end testing.
  • Ensure AI and ML solutions are designed with the end user in mind.
• Model Deployment & Monitoring:
  • Partner with software engineering and DevOps teams to deploy models and AI capabilities into production environments.
  • Monitor model performance over time, recalibrating, optimizing, and improving systems as needed.
  • Design and implement A/B testing and experimentation frameworks.
  • Strengthen production readiness practices.
• Team Leadership & Growth:
  • Lead, manage, and develop a small team of data scientists.
  • Provide close technical guidance and management proximity to the work.
  • Reduce unnecessary coordination burden on individual contributors.
  • Set technical and cultural direction across the team.
  • Mentor senior technical talent.
  • Grow the team through hiring and defining roles.

Qualifications

• 10 to 15 years of experience in data science, machine learning, AI systems, or a related field.
• 3 to 5+ years leading and growing a data science, machine learning, or AI team.
• Recognized depth in machine learning, AI systems, advanced analytics, or applied data science.
• Proven track record architecting and deploying machine learning models.
• Experience working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, UX, and senior leadership.
• Strong experience with statistical analysis, predictive modeling, experimentation, A/B testing, and model evaluation.
• Experience defining AI/ML guardrails, operating standards, and production readiness expectations.
• Proficiency in Python and/or R and machine learning libraries.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related field.
• Excellent communication skills.

Requirements

• Hands-on experience building agentic AI systems, LLM applications, deep learning, or NLP solutions.
• Experience with AIOps, observability, infrastructure monitoring, IT operations, or enterprise software platforms.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Familiarity with big data technologies like ClickHouse, Spark, Hadoop, Databricks, or similar platforms.
• Strong knowledge of SQL and experience with database querying.
• Familiarity with data visualization tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Matplotlib, or similar tools.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans.
• 401(k) plan with employer match.
• Flexible Paid Time Off (FTO).
• Volunteer Time Off (VTO).
• 5-year Service Milestone Sabbatical.
• Paid parental leave.
• Generous employee referral bonus program.
• Pet insurance.
• HQ Office centrally located in Reston Town Center.
• Regular virtual company-wide events.
• The opportunity to learn and develop from some of the best and brightest minds in the industry!