Lead Data Scientist – Autonomous Driving

Avride; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Avride in Austin, Texas is looking for an Analytics Lead to build and manage the analytics function, evaluating autonomous driving technology. You will lead a team, design experiments, and automate analysis efforts.

The ideal candidate has 4+ years of analytics experience, strong Python, SQL skills, and expertise in statistical reasoning. Leadership experience in forming teams and guiding analysts is essential for this role, which offers unique opportunities in a cutting-edge field.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in analytics for complex technology products.
• Strong background in statistical reasoning for evaluating change.
• Proven mentoring and hiring experience in analytics.

Responsibilities

• Understand and evaluate autonomous driving technology deeply.
• Build and lead the analytics team, take part in hiring.
• Design, run, and interpret statistical experiments.
• Automate analysis pipelines with data engineers.

Skills

Strong Python

SQL

Statistical reasoning

Technical leadership

Education

MS or PhD in Statistics or related field

Job description

Our team is responsible for understanding how our technology performs and turning that understanding into confident decisions. We bring together simulation data, real-world driving data, structured test results, and human-labeled data to evaluate the stack end to end. We collaborate across the stack and deliver analytics on a wide range of technology aspects, from low-level hardware and performance to behavior quality in specific road scenarios. We answer questions from issues with system performance in specific conditions to how ready we are overall to launch from a safety perspective.

About the Role

We are building the analytics function and looking for people with a leadership mindset and deep analytics experience. You will lead a focus area in evaluation and experimentation, help hire and shape the IC team, guide analysts on scope and methods, and work closely with partner teams. You will integrate simulation and on-road evidence, use a broad toolkit of analytical methods, and produce clear, action-oriented outputs for stakeholders. You are comfortable staying hands‑on as an individual contributor.

What You’ll Do

• Understand the technology deeply. Go deep into autonomous driving technology across behavior and hardware. Evaluate platform health and system behavior, and define the right metrics and metric hierarchy to quantify technology quality.
• Help build and lead the team. Contribute to team formation, take part in hiring and leveling up analysts, and set direction for an evaluation focus area while collaborating with technology leaders and with teams that build data infrastructure and analytics tools.
• Be hands‑on with experiments. Design, run, and interpret experiments using solid statistical methods. Be ready to analyze results yourself and translate them into well‑supported decisions.
• Build and automate analysis. Collaborate with data engineers and backend developers to assemble datasets and productionize analysis pipelines that automate recurring computations with attention to performance and reliability.

What You’ll Need

• Experience: 4+ years in analytics for a large‑scale or complex technology product.
• Statistics: Strong background in statistical reasoning and methods for evaluating change and uncertainty.
• Coding: Strong Python and SQL; you can independently run experiments and ship analyses and pipelines end to end.
• Leadership: Proven technical leadership, mentoring, and hiring experience in analytics.

Nice to Have

• Formal training in statistics (for example, MS or PhD in Statistics, Applied Statistics, Biostatistics, Econometrics, or a quantitative field with rigorous statistical coursework).
• Familiarity with the modern data stack and experience in data engineering.
• Background in autonomy or other technologically intensive domains.

Candidates are required to be authorized to work in the U.S. The employer is not offering relocation sponsorship, and remote work options are not available.

Avride is an equal opportunity employer and committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants and employees with disabilities to ensure they have equal access to employment opportunities. Avride complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), if you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with the application or hiring process, or to perform the essential functions of a job, please email [e-mail].