Staff Data Scientist - Gradient AI

Gradient AI is the decision-intelligence partner for the insurance industry, giving customers an advantage in how they make decisions by revealing risk others miss and translating it into stronger performance and real-world impact. Our platform harnesses a vast industry data lake—tens of millions of policies and claims enriched with economic, health, geographic, and demographic signals—integrating cleanly with existing workflows to make complex risk clear, usable, and actionable.

Backed by $56M in Series C funding and scaling fast, we are seeking a Staff Data Scientist to lead complex modeling and analytical projects across our product suite.

This is a fully remote opportunity with hybrid work available to candidates local to Boston.

About the Role

As a Staff Data Scientist, you will lead complex modeling and analytical projects of broad and diverse scope. You will drive cross-product initiatives with minimal direction, setting the technical approach where problems are ambiguous and raising the bar for the entire data science team.

How You Will Make an Impact

• Leverage modern deep learning and large language models alongside traditional data science techniques to create powerful hybrid models with real uplift.
• Brainstorm, prototype, prove, deploy, and realize the value of your work in market quickly.
• Work across big data, federated learning, unstructured data challenges, time-series, and sequence modeling using a self-serve suite of techniques from GLMs to XGBoost to Transformers.
• Tell stories with your data. Inspire trust in customers, stakeholders, and prospects by turning complex math into clear, actionable messages that drive the bottom line.

Who You Are

• You focus on delivering real-world value quickly and iteratively.
• You have strong software engineering discipline within data science, preferring Python over R and comfortable working directly in command-line environments.
• You enjoy taking initiative and spearheading new, loosely defined projects.
• You build scalable systems, packages, and frameworks that elevate the capabilities of the entire team.

Qualifications & Skills

• Education & Experience:
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Biostatistics, Mathematics, or a related field AND 5+ years of professional data science experience building predictive models; OR
  • Master’s or Ph.D. in a quantitative field AND 3–5 years of professional data science experience building predictive models.
• Deep Learning & AI: Advanced proficiency with deep learning frameworks, the core Python data science ecosystem, and modern AI architectures (Transformers, Neural Networks, LLMs).
• Communication: Strong technical communication and collaboration skills, with a track record of explaining complex concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• MLOps & Engineering: Hands-on experience taking models from notebook to production—experiment tracking, packaging, containerization (Docker), model serving/APIs, CI/CD, and pipeline orchestration.
• Production Monitoring: Experience tracking data/concept drift, performance degradation, and setting up alerting.
• Leadership: Experience mentoring junior data scientists, driving best practices, and setting team standards.

Bonus Qualifications

• Fluency with actuarial methods or experience working alongside actuaries.
• Familiarity with healthcare and medical data.
• Familiarity with insurance underwriting, claims, or predicting long-tailed and rare events.

What We Offer

• Base salary range of $160,000 – $195,000 annually + annual performance bonus + equity grant.
• Generous stock options so everyone owns a piece of what we build.
• Unlimited vacation days and a flexible remote schedule.
• Comprehensive health benefits (Medical, Dental, Vision, 401k, Paid Parental Leave).
• Continuous learning and growth opportunities in a fast-paced startup culture.