Data Scientist, Senior Specialist

Vanguard; Farmers Branch (TX); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Vanguard Group is seeking a senior Data Scientist/AI leader to guide enterprise conversational AI initiatives across voice and chat. The role centers on steering complex AI/ML programs from design to production, with emphasis on agentic systems, NLP, and Generative AI.

You will oversee the full AI lifecycle, develop evaluation methodologies, and translate technical insights into actionable business outcomes. Hybrid work and cross-functional collaboration are core features of the role.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of data science or AI experience with leadership.
• Strong ML knowledge including NLP and transformer models.
• Hands-on experience with agentic AI systems.
• Strong Python and data-analysis skills.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior technical leader for AI/ML across enterprise conversational AI.
• Drive Data Science across the full AI lifecycle, from problem formulation to production measurement.
• Lead development and optimization of AI/ML solutions, including NLP, Generative AI, LLM-based applications.
• Advance evaluation and production intelligence for conversational AI, establishing rigorous evaluation methods.
• Develop scalable evaluation approaches to identify failure modes and guide release decisions.
• Apply analytical thinking to diagnose model behavior and design experiments.
• Turn data into clear insights and actionable product recommendations.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Analytics, Risk and other stakeholders as an embedded technical leader.
• Establish standards and best practices for model development, evaluation, observability, and responsible AI use.
• Drive continuous improvement of conversational and agentic systems through experiments and signals.
• Communicate AI concepts and risks clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Stay current with advances in AI and Data Science.

Skills

Data science leadership

Machine learning

Natural Language Processing

Generative AI

Python

Data analytics

Experimentation and evaluation

Communication and stakeholder mgmt

Education

Bachelor’s degree (CS/Eng/Data Science/Statistics)

Advanced degree preferred

Job description

Core Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior technical leader for traditional and agentic AI/ML capabilities supporting enterprise conversational AI across voice, chat, and emerging agentic experiences while providing technical direction and guiding complex solutions from design through production.
• Drive Data Science across the full AI lifecycle, from problem formulation, research and experimentation through solution design, development, evaluation, deployment readiness, production measurement, and continuous optimization.
• Lead development and optimization of traditional and agentic AI/ML solutions, including supervised and unsupervised learning, NLP, Generative AI, LLM-based applications, agentic systems, classification models, and knowledge/retrieval-based solutions.
• Advance evaluation and production intelligence for conversational AI, establishing rigorous methods to assess functional accuracy, user-need fulfillment, reliability, and other system-level behaviors.
• Develop scalable evaluation approaches that enable teams to identify failure modes, compare solutions, establish benchmarks, and make evidence-based release decisions.
• Apply strong analytical and statistical thinking to uncover patterns in large and complex datasets, diagnose model and system behavior, perform root-cause analysis, design experiments, quantify uncertainty, and translate findings into actionable product and engineering recommendations.
• Turn complex data into clear, cohesive stories and actionable insights, combining exploratory analysis, visualization, statistical reasoning, and business context to deliver diagnostic metrics and product improvements.
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Architecture, UX, Analytics, Risk and other stakeholders as an embedded technical leader, translating ambiguous business and client problems into measurable Data Science problems and scalable AI solutions
• Establish technical standards and best practices for model development, experimentation, evaluation, validation, observability, explainability, documentation, and responsible use of AI.
• Drive continuous improvement of conversational and agentic systems by converting evaluation and production signals into hypotheses, experiments, model/prompt/system improvements, and measurable outcomes.
• Communicate complex AI/ML concepts, findings, risks, and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders and influence decisions across cross-functional teams.
• Stay current with advances in AI and Data Science and evaluate emerging methods, models, frameworks, and architectures.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant Data Science, Machine Learning, or applied AI experience, with demonstrated experience leading complex technical work; prior people leadership or technical team leadership strongly preferred.
• Strong practical foundation in machine learning, including supervised and unsupervised learning, feature engineering, model development, validation, experimentation, and performance measurement.
• Demonstrated expertise in Natural Language Processing and Generative AI, with a strong understanding of transformer architectures, embeddings, LLMs, prompting, retrieval-augmented generation, and modern language-model development patterns.
• Hands-on experience designing, building, evaluating, or optimizing agentic AI systems, including areas such as orchestration/routing, tool use, knowledge retrieval, multi-turn conversational behavior, and agent evaluation.
• Strong Python and data-analysis skills, with experience working with large datasets and using modern ML/Data Science libraries and development environments.
• Experience with AI/ML evaluation and observability, including developing evaluation datasets, metrics, benchmarks, automated evaluations, production monitoring, failure analysis, and methods for connecting model/system behavior to client or business outcomes.
• Ability to move comfortably between technical depth and business context, translating loosely defined problems into hypotheses, analytical approaches, measurable success criteria, and actionable recommendations.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and develop Data Scientists, provide thoughtful technical review, establish engineering and modeling standards, manage competing priorities, and create an environment of accountability, learning, and experimentation.
• Strong data analytics, visualization, and storytelling skills to turn complex data into actionable insights.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to explain complex AI concepts and influence Product, Engineering, Architecture, Analytics, Risk, and senior business stakeholders.

Education

• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Economics, Analytics, or a related quantitative discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
  • Advanced degree preferred.

Special Factors

Sponsorship

Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.

About Vanguard

At Vanguard, we don't just have a mission—we're on a mission.

To work for the long-term financial wellbeing of our clients. To lead through product and services that transform our clients' lives. To learn and develop our skills as individuals and as a team. From Malvern to Melbourne, our mission drives us forward and inspires us to be our best.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.