Senior Data Scientist, AI/ML & LLM Innovation

Northwestern Mutual Group; Milwaukee (WI); On-site; USD 119,000 - 178,000; Full time

Job summary

Northwestern Mutual is seeking a highly skilled AI/Data Scientist to craft advanced statistical models, ML solutions, and AI systems for monetization and productization. You’ll build end-to-end data pipelines, evaluate model performance, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive measurable business impact.

The role emphasizes mentoring, rigorous data analysis, and innovative problem solving, with a focus on reliability, drift monitoring, and scalable analytics across cloud platforms.

Qualifications

• Proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Experience with common ML libraries (e.g. scikit-learn) and cloud data platforms (e.g. databricks).
• Experience with agentic engineering: designing agents and multi-agent workflows, including tool integration, orchestration, guardrails and human-in-the-loop checkpoints.
• Understanding of context engineering. How to structure instructions, retrieved information, tool outputs, and memory so AI systems perform reliably.
• Understanding of how to evaluate AI systems, including accuracy, hallucination rates, consistency, and cost/latency, using structured test sets and human review.
• Ability and desire to mentor other team members through projects independently from start to finish, working with internal and external teams to make decisions and maintain momentum.
• Excellent time and project management skills, with the ability to manage detailed work and communicate project status effectively to all levels.
• Proven track record in meeting aggressive deadlines.
• At least 5 years of relevant experience with demonstrated success using data science to deliver significant business impact or develop data- or algorithm-based products.

Responsibilities

• Develop LLM-based, mathematical models, algorithms, machine learning techniques, and robust analytics to support analytic insights and visualization of complex data sets for productization and monetization.
• Create evaluation frameworks and monitor deployed models and AI systems for performance, drift and unintended outcomes.
• Applies creative problem solving and inter-departmental networking to address data and information needs across the enterprise.
• Share best practices with peers through coaching and mentoring core methodologies, patterns, standards and processes.
• Access and extract data from diverse sources residing on multiple platforms and implement large, complex data models and information solutions by combining, synthesizing and structuring data from various data sources.

Skills

Python & SQL

ML libraries & cloud platforms

Agentic engineering

Context engineering

AI system evaluation

Mentoring

Time & project management

Deadlines

Data science impact

Education

Bachelor's degree in Data Science/Statistics/Math/CS

Advanced degree (Master/PhD)

Tools

Databricks

AWS

Azure

Job description

Northwestern Mutual is seeking a highly skilled AI/Data Scientist to craft advanced statistical models, ML solutions, and AI systems for monetization and productization. You’ll build end-to-end data pipelines, evaluate model performance, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive measurable business impact.

The role emphasizes mentoring, rigorous data analysis, and innovative problem solving, with a focus on reliability, drift monitoring, and scalable analytics across cloud platforms.