Senior Data Scientist

Are you looking for a high-impact AI and Data Science role offering the opportunity to build cutting-edge AI solutions, drive innovation across a growing organization, and see your work make a meaningful difference? Would you enjoy combining advanced machine learning, generative AI, and agentic workflows with the opportunity to work on real-world business challenges in a mission-driven environment?

A highly respected, purpose-driven financial services organization is seeking a Senior Applied AI & Data Scientist to help accelerate its AI capabilities across insurance, investments, membership, and charitable initiatives. This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced AI professional to take ownership of end-to-end solutions, from initial concept and model development through production deployment and measurable business impact.

Why Consider This Opportunity?

• High-impact AI role: Take ownership of innovative AI solutions that directly support business strategy and operational performance.
• Cutting-edge technology: Work with generative AI, LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows, advanced machine learning, and modern enterprise data platforms.
• End-to-end ownership: Drive solutions from initial concept and experimentation through deployment, evaluation, and continuous improvement.
• Meaningful mission: Apply your technical expertise to an organization focused on financial security, family, and charitable giving.
• Collaborative environment: Partner with business leaders, engineering teams, and AI professionals to bring new capabilities to life.
• Career development: Help shape enterprise AI standards and expand your influence across a growing AI and Data Science organization.

What are people saying about this company?

• "It's great to work for an organization that genuinely cares about giving back. Knowing that $1.73 billion has been donated to charitable causes over the past 10 years makes you feel like you're part of something bigger."
• "There are plenty of opportunities to learn, grow, and develop your skills. The company supports professional development and gives you the opportunity to continue building your career."
• "One of the best parts of working here is getting to apply cutting-edge technology to real business challenges that actually make a difference. You're helping support millions of members and their families while working on exciting AI initiatives."

Title: Senior Applied AI & Data Scientist

Location: New Haven County, CT (Hybrid)

Salary: $140,000 – $165,000 +Bonus

Benefits: Medical / Dental / 401k / PTO and more.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end development and delivery of AI solutions, from identifying business opportunities and exploratory analysis through production deployment and performance measurement.
• Design and develop innovative generative AI and LLM-powered analytics capabilities, including Deep Research solutions leveraging enterprise data through Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).
• Build intelligent agentic workflows and multi-step AI orchestration using tool integration, function calling, retrieval, and responsible AI guardrails to automate business processes.
• Develop advanced statistical and machine learning models supporting insurance, actuarial, claims, risk management, and investment decision-making.
• Engineer reusable AI capabilities, including feature pipelines, embeddings, vector search, semantic retrieval, and enterprise knowledge management strategies.
• Establish evaluation frameworks and success metrics to measure AI quality, accuracy, safety, performance, cost, and business impact.
• Partner with engineering teams to productionize AI solutions, implement CI/CD processes, establish monitoring and drift detection, and support ongoing model operations.
• Apply responsible AI principles throughout the development lifecycle, including fairness assessments, transparency, model documentation, and audit-ready governance.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders, executives, data analysts, engineers, and compliance teams to translate complex business challenges into practical AI solutions.
• Help establish enterprise-wide AI and machine learning best practices, reusable frameworks, development standards, and governance processes.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience delivering advanced analytics and machine learning solutions, including production deployment.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience developing and delivering enterprise generative AI and LLM solutions, including RAG, agentic workflows, evaluation, and guardrails.
• Strong Python and SQL programming skills, with experience using machine learning frameworks such as scikit-learn, XGBoost, PyTorch, or TensorFlow.
• Hands-on experience with Snowflake, including Snowpark and/or Cortex, and relational databases such as PostgreSQL.
• Experience with vector search, embeddings, knowledge retrieval, vector databases, and hybrid search strategies.
• Experience partnering with software engineering teams to deploy production AI services, APIs, and data pipelines, with exposure to monitoring, CI/CD, and model lifecycle management.
• Ability to develop robust evaluation strategies for AI and LLM solutions and connect technical performance to measurable business outcomes.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical concepts, business value, risks, and tradeoffs to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Financial services experience, particularly within life insurance, annuities, investments, or other regulated industries.
• Familiarity with model governance, responsible AI frameworks, and enterprise risk management practices.
• Experience with legacy-to-cloud data modernization, including IBM DB2 extracts and integration platforms such as Talend.
• Familiarity with ML lifecycle tools such as MLflow, containerization technologies such as Docker, and API frameworks such as FastAPI or Flask.
• Experience developing reusable AI frameworks, production-ready solutions, and enterprise-scale machine learning capabilities.