Data Scientist (Senior, Lead, Staff & Principal)

About Encore Talent Solutions

Encore Talent Solutions is a trusted professional services firm dedicated to helping organizations achieve their goals by providing exceptional talent solutions. We partner closely with our clients to understand their unique culture and operational needs, delivering proactive support during times of growth, transition, and change. Our mission is to connect top talent with meaningful opportunities to drive business success.

Job Description

We are seeking Senior, Lead, Staff, and Principal Data Scientists to join our dynamic team. In this role, you will play a key part in evaluating, measuring, and improving the performance of AI and machine learning systems in production. You will bridge advanced analytics with business outcomes by translating model performance into meaningful operational and financial insights while developing scalable evaluation frameworks that drive continuous improvement.
You will collaborate with machine learning engineers, software engineers, product managers, operations leaders, and business stakeholders to ensure AI-powered solutions deliver measurable value in a fast-paced, production-focused environment.
Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and own evaluation frameworks for production AI and machine learning systems.
• Define performance metrics and establish evaluation datasets to measure model effectiveness across offline and production environments.
• Analyze production AI metrics—including precision, recall, calibration, latency, hallucination rates, and operational costs—and translate them into meaningful business outcomes.
• Develop hypotheses based on production data and AI system behavior, validating findings through statistical analysis, experimentation, and causal inference techniques.
• Partner with Machine Learning Engineers, Product Managers, and Operations teams to refine business problems and influence product direction.
• Build and maintain dashboards, KPIs, and recurring reports that provide visibility into AI system health, performance, and business impact.
• Present analytical findings and recommendations to business leaders, executives, clients, and cross-functional teams in a clear, actionable manner.
• Build reusable evaluation tools, analytics frameworks, and reporting assets that support scalability across the organization.
• Analyze production logs and operational telemetry to identify trends, root causes, and optimization opportunities.
• Drive continuous improvement by translating analysis into deployed enhancements that improve AI performance and operational outcomes.
• Mentor junior data scientists and contribute to the development of evaluation standards and best practices across the organization (Lead, Staff, and Principal levels).

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Economics, Engineering, Physics, or another quantitative discipline.
• Master’s degree preferred; equivalent applied experience will be considered.
• Senior Level: 4 years of applied Data Science experience.
• Lead, Staff, and Principal Levels: Progressive experience leading complex AI initiatives, mentoring teams, and driving enterprise-wide AI strategy.
• Demonstrated experience evaluating production AI and machine learning systems—not solely developing models in research or notebook environments.
• Proven track record of deploying AI solutions that deliver measurable business value.
• Strong proficiency in:
• Python
• SQL
• Pandas
• NumPy
• Scikit-learn
• Strong understanding of:
• Applied statistics
• Experimentation design
• Causal inference
• Power analysis
• Confidence intervals
• AI/ML evaluation methodologies
• Experience with:
• Offline and online model evaluation
• Evaluation datasets
• Model drift monitoring
• LLM evaluation techniques
• Production analytics
• Ability to read production logs, identify behavioral patterns, and formulate actionable hypotheses.
• Experience working with version control systems, code reviews, and production software development practices.
• Excellent analytical, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) or healthcare analytics experience.
• Experience establishing AI evaluation standards across teams or organizations.
• Experience mentoring Data Scientists and influencing AI quality strategy.
• Familiarity with modern Large Language Model (LLM) evaluation techniques, including:
• LLM-as-a-Judge
• Prompt evaluation
• Hallucination detection
• AI safety and quality metrics
• Experience working with experimentation frameworks and A/B testing methodologies.
• Familiarity with distributed systems and production software environments.
• Exposure to programming languages such as:
• Java
• Scala
• Go
• C
• Rust
• Experience working closely with Machine Learning Engineers, Software Engineers, and Product teams in Agile environments.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms, MLOps, model monitoring, and production deployment pipelines.

Work Environment & Location

• Location: Remote, Hybrid, or Onsite (based on client requirements)
• Travel: Minimal, as required
• Collaborative team environment with opportunities to shape enterprise AI strategy, influence product direction, mentor technical teams, and build production AI systems that deliver measurable business value.

Equal Opportunity EmployerEncore Talent Solutions is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We respect and seek to empower each individual and support the diverse cultures, perspectives, skills, and experiences within our workforce.