Director Data Scientist, Generative AI (Tech Lead)

gympass; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Home-office allowance

Parental leave (100% paid)

Health insurance

Premium wellbeing subscription

Career development resources

Job summary

gympass is seeking a Senior Director to lead the generative AI function for its workplace wellbeing platform, guiding both hands-on LLM work and people leadership across product, engineering and design.

You will set strategy, recruit and mentor senior scientists, and drive production-scale AI initiatives that translate research into business value globally.

Qualifications

• 5+ years leading data science or ML teams in production environments.
• Experience managing senior and principal-level scientists.
• Hands-on expertise in generative AI systems, LLM architecture, deployment, and fine-tuning.

Responsibilities

• Define multi-quarter strategy and roadmap for generative AI.
• Recruit, lead, and develop senior data scientists and grow AI talent.
• Set standards for LLM-based, agentic systems and RAG, tool-use, memory, multi-agent coordination.
• Build evaluation frameworks for offline/online evals, LLM-as-judge, safety guardrails.
• Drive LLMOps maturity: deployment, monitoring, cost/latency optimization from experiments to production.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Design and leadership to demonstrate ROI.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

MLOps/LLMOps

Leadership

Executive alignment

Cloud platforms

LLM deployment

Tools

LLM deployment tooling

Evaluation frameworks

Job description

Role overview

A senior director-level opportunity to lead the generative AI function for a workplace wellbeing platform used by employees globally. The role blends hands‑on technical leadership in large language model systems with people management of senior scientists, partnering closely with Product, Engineering, and Design to turn AI research into shipped product value.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the multi‑quarter strategy and roadmap for generative AI, translating business goals into a prioritized technical plan
• Recruit, lead, and develop a multidisciplinary team including senior and principal-level data scientists, fostering psychological safety and continuous learning
• Set standards for designing, evaluating, and deploying LLM-based and agentic systems, including RAG, tool‑use, memory, and multi‑agent orchestration
• Build rigorous evaluation frameworks covering offline and online evals, LLM-as-judge, safety guardrails, and quality/reliability benchmarks
• Drive LLMOps maturity, owning deployment, monitoring, and cost/latency optimization from experiment through production
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Design, and executive leadership to secure buy‑in and demonstrate ROI as generative AI moves from innovation hub to core business driver

Requirements

• 5+ years leading data science or machine learning teams in fast-paced production environments, with multiple complex generative AI or large-scale ML products shipped end‑to‑end
• Direct experience managing senior and principal‑level scientists and growing elite AI talent
• Deep hands‑on expertise in modern generative AI systems, including LLM architecture, evaluation, production‑scale deployment, and foundation model fine‑tuning where warranted
• Strong Python skills and proficiency with modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, plus solid MLOps/LLMOps understanding in cloud environments
• Track record of translating complex technical concepts for non‑technical stakeholders and securing executive alignment

Nice to have

• Experience balancing frontier research adoption with the discipline of building stable, reliable products
• Ability to contribute to and uplift a broader company‑wide data science community of practice

Benefits and work setup

• Remote position open to candidates based in Portugal, with flexible work arrangements and a monthly home‑office allowance
• Flexible scheduling where employees align working patterns with time zones, team needs, and personal routines
• Minimum 25 days paid holiday per year, plus an additional day per year of tenure (up to five)
• 100% paid parental leave for all new parents, with extended leave and a ramp‑back period for birthing parents
• Free premium subscription to the wellbeing platform, with ability to add up to three family members
• Health insurance coverage and a one‑time home‑office setup reimbursement
• Access to career development resources, internal mobility opportunities, and continuous learning programs