Forward Deployed Data Scientist - Oil & Gas, Houston

Fundamental; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation with salary &

Health coverage

Relocation support

Mission-driven culture

Equity

Job summary

Fundamental in Houston is seeking a Forward Deployed Data Scientist for Oil & Gas to drive adoption of NEXUS and collaborate with customers to address complex technical challenges with an initial focus on Houston-based Oil & Gas customers.

The Data Scientist will manage customer relations with IT, C‑suite and data teams, translating field insights into our product roadmap and ensuring secure production deployments across client environments.

Qualifications

• PhD or master in CS/Math/Stats or equivalent deep statistical literacy.
• 7+ years as a technical individual contributor in data science, ML, or ML engineering.
• Experience with customers or business stakeholders, ideally in complex environments.
• Experience with containerization (Docker) and API development (FastAPI/Flask).
• Master end-to-end ML pipelines from framing to validation strategies.
• Deep data handling with PySpark and Pandas, memory optimization.
• Proven experience optimizing models for business problems.
• Strong communication translating architecture into business value.

Responsibilities

• Deploy into production use cases with measurable business impact and ROI.
• Conduct benchmarking against client baselines and drive data engineering tasks.
• Collaborate with research and product teams to align on the roadmap.
• Architect and guide data handling, data leakage prevention, and integration points.
• Work with Sales and Solutions teams to explain predictions to business users.

Skills

Data science

ML engineering

Customer engagement

API development

Distributed systems

Education

PhD / Master in CS / Math / Stats

Tools

Docker

FastAPI/Flask

PyTorch

PySpark

Pandas

Job description

About Fundamental

Fundamental is an AI research lab pioneering the future of enterprise decision-making. Our flagship model, NEXUS is the world's most powerful Large Tabular Model (LTM) - purpose-built for the structured records that contain trillions of dollars in business value. With $275m in funding from leading investors and trusted by Fortune 100 companies, Fundamental is giving businesses the Power to Predict.

At Fundamental, you'll work on unprecedented technical challenges in foundation model development and build technology that transforms how the world's largest companies make decisions. This is your opportunity to be part of a category-defining company from the ground-up. Join the team defining the future of enterprise AI.

About the role

Fundamental is seeking a Forward Deployed Data Scientist - Oil & Gas, Houston to facilitate the adoption of NEXUS and collaborate with customers to address complex technical challenges with an initial focus on Houston-based Oil & Gas customers.

The Data Scientist is an integral part of our FDE team, which is dedicated to driving the successful deployment of Fundamental products and proving value over legacy baselines or net new use cases. They work hand-in-hand with customers from the Proof of Value stage to post-implementation, ensuring our solutions run securely in the client's production heartbeat.

In this role, you’ll manage customer relations involving multiple stakeholders (IT, C-suite, and data science teams) and function as a key bridge, translating field insights into our product roadmap.

Key responsibilities

• You'll individually help deploy into production use cases with considerable business impact, moving from "science experiments" to definitive ROI

• You’ll work on rigorous head-to-head benchmarking against client baselines (XGBoost, LightGBM), executing the work of data engineering, feature engineering, and validation

• You’ll work in collaboration with our research and product teams to translate operational pain points and data anomalies into essential inputs for the Fundamental roadmap

• You’ll be involved in technical strategy to identify the right business problems, prevent data leakage, and handle the "last mile" integration (VPC, on-prem, air-gapped)

• Your collaboration with the Sales and Solution Architect teams will help align diverse stakeholders and explain predictions to business users

Must have

• You hold a PhD / master in CS / Math / Stats or you have equivalent deep statistical literacy

• You have 7+ years as a technical individual contributor in Data Science, Machine Learning, Applied Science, or ML Engineering

• You have strong experience working directly with customers or business stakeholders, ideally in complex enterprise or industrial environments

• You have experience with containerization (Docker), orchestration, and writing performant APIs (FastAPI/Flask)

• You master the end-to-end pipeline, from framing, pre-processing, ml algorithm and validation strategies

• You have a deep understanding of data handling (PySpark, Pandas) and memory optimization

• You have demonstrated experience optimizing models for a specific business problem

• You hold strong communication skills with an ability to translate architectural nuances into clear business value

Nice to have

• Experience with PyTorch and cloud-native ML pipelines (AWS, GCP, Azure)

• Prior experience or understanding of Oil & Gas, energy, utilities, industrials, logistics, or heavy asset environments

• Experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Staff Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, or Staff Data Scientist

• Industry-based subject matter expertise

Benefits

• Competitive compensation with salary and equity

• Comprehensive health coverage for you and your dependents, including medical, dental, vision, and 401K

• Paid parental leave for all new parents, inclusive of adoptive and surrogate journeys

• Relocation support for employees moving to join the team in one of our office locations

• A mission-driven, low-ego culture that values diversity of thought, ownership, and bias toward action