Founding Principal Data Scientist — Shape Our AI Roadmap

Harnham; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Base salary up to $200,000

Annual bonus

Founding Data Science capacity

Ownership over DS roadmap

High visibility with senior leadership

Hybrid Chicago – 3 days on-site

Job summary

Harnham in Chicago, IL is hiring a Principal Data Scientist as a founding hire to shape and lead a new data science capability. The role blends hands-on work with strategic ownership, working closely with senior stakeholders to define the problem space and deliver scalable data solutions.

You will guide end-to-end DS initiatives, influence the technical roadmap, and build models that directly impact commercial and operational decisions while operating in a hybrid environment with 3 days on-site.

Qualifications

• Significant professional experience delivering data science and machine learning solutions in commercial environments.
• Strong Python and SQL skills with hands-on capability.
• Experience building predictive/ML models from concept to deployment.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end DS/ML projects from discovery to deployment and measurement.
• Identify and prioritize high-value opportunities for predictive analytics, ML, and AI.
• Build models and analytics that influence commercial and operational decisions.
• Translate complex business problems into technical strategies with senior stakeholders.
• Establish best practices around modeling, experimentation, deployment, and DS development.
• Shape the DS roadmap, tooling, and architecture for the function.
• Remain hands-on with Python/SQL and modern DS tooling.
• Help scale the Data Science capability as the team grows.

Skills

Advanced Python

SQL

ML models

Stakeholder comms

Data science

Consulting exposure

Tools

Pandas

Scikit-learn

Job description

Harnham in Chicago, IL is hiring a Principal Data Scientist as a founding hire to shape and lead a new data science capability. The role blends hands-on work with strategic ownership, working closely with senior stakeholders to define the problem space and deliver scalable data solutions.

You will guide end-to-end DS initiatives, influence the technical roadmap, and build models that directly impact commercial and operational decisions while operating in a hybrid environment with 3 days on-site.