Data Scientist (Forward Deployed)

Fundamental; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation with salary and equity

Comprehensive health coverage

Paid parental leave

Relocation support

Mission-driven culture that values diversity

Job summary

Fundamental is looking for a Forward Deployed Data Scientist/MLE in San Francisco to lead deployments of their innovative NEXUS model.

In this role, you will manage relations with stakeholders while addressing complex technical challenges and translating insights into product improvements. The ideal candidate will possess a Ph.D. or master's degree in a relevant field and have 2+ years of experience in technical roles.

Competitive compensation and a culture valuing diversity and ownership are part of the offer.

Qualifications

• 2+ years as a technical individual contributor (data scientist or software engineer).
• Mastery of the end‑to‑end pipeline, from framing to validation strategies.
• Demonstrated experience optimizing models for specific business problems.

Responsibilities

• Help deploy use cases with considerable business impact.
• Work on head-to-head benchmarking against client baselines.
• Translate operational pain points into essential inputs for the Fundamental roadmap.

Skills

Experience with containerization (Docker)

Strong communication skills

Deep understanding of data handling (PySpark, Pandas)

Experience optimizing models for business problems

Education

PhD / master in CS / Math / Stats or equivalent

Tools

FastAPI

Flask

Job description

About Fundamental

Fundamental is an AI company pioneering the future of enterprise decision‑making. Founded by DeepMind alumni, Fundamental has developed NEXUS – the world's most powerful Large Tabular Model (LTM) – purpose‑built for the structured records that actually drive enterprise decisions. Backed by world class investors and trusted by Fortune 100 companies, Fundamental unlocks trillions of dollars of value by 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/MLE to facilitate the adoption of NEXUS and collaborate with customers to address complex technical challenges.

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

• Individually help deploy use cases with considerable business impact, moving from "science experiments" to definitive ROI.
• Work on rigorous head‑to‑head benchmarking against client baselines (XGBoost, LightGBM), executing the work of data engineering, feature engineering, and validation.
• Collaborate with our research and product teams to translate operational pain points and data anomalies into essential inputs for the Fundamental roadmap.
• 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).
• Collaborate with the Sales and Solution Architect teams to align diverse stakeholders and explain predictions to business users.

Must have

• PhD / master in CS / Math / Stats or equivalent deep statistical literacy.
• 2+ years as a technical individual contributor (data scientist or software engineer).
• Experience with containerization (Docker), orchestration, and writing performant APIs (FastAPI/Flask).
• Mastery of the end‑to‑end pipeline, from framing, pre‑processing, ML algorithm and validation strategies.
• Deep understanding of data handling (PySpark, Pandas) and memory optimization.
• Demonstrated experience optimizing models for a specific business problem.
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.