Principal Data Scientist
RemoteUnited States
Job Summary
Lead end-to-end AI/ML initiatives for Risepoint's predictive engine, defining strategy, architecture, and measurable outcomes to drive student retention and enrollment across 100+ university partners. Build and deploy churn-risk and engagement models using MLOps frameworks like Databricks, MLFlow, and Dagster, while owning scalable data pipelines, feature stores, and production automation with Terraform and Kubernetes. Lead cross-functional alignment with Product, Engineering, and CX teams to translate technical tradeoffs into business decisions, ensuring models are monitored, retrained, and optimized for real-world impact. Mentor engineers and establish technical standards for data lineage and explainability.
Required Qualifications
- 8+ years in applied machine learning or data science
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in a technical discipline (computer science, statistics, econometrics, mathematics, or engineering)
- Strong background in predictive analytics, recommendation systems, and experimentation (A/B testing, causal inference, uplift modeling)
- Deep expertise in Python and SQL
- Proficiency with ML libraries (scikit-learn, XGBoost, TensorFlow, or PyTorch)
- Experience with Databricks, MLFlow, dbt, and Dagster
- Principal-level data engineering experience: architecting and operating production data pipelines, data models, and feature stores at scale
- Hands-on experience taking models to production and operating them there—deployment, serving, monitoring, and retraining
- Proficiency with production automation tooling: workflow orchestration (Dagster, Airflow), CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Strong grounding in data quality, governance, lineage, and observability practices
- Comfort working with complex, multi-source datasets (CRM, LMS, communication logs, speech analytics)
- Excellent communicator and influencer across technical and non-technical audiences, including peers, managers, executives, and business partners outside BT
- Experience operating as a principal-level technical leader or domain authority: independently resolving moderately complex, ambiguous problems; setting direction for AI/ML programs; and delivering outcomes across teams in a cross-functional environment
- A proven track record of delivering measurable consumer and business impact through AI/ML initiatives—scoping, managing implementation, and owning outcomes end-to-end
Desired Qualifications
- PhD in a technical discipline (not required, but valued)
- Experience in higher education, edtech, or student success platforms
- Familiarity with human-in-the-loop AI systems and responsible ML practices (bias mitigation, model transparency, fairness metrics)
- Prior work building or operationalizing next best action or propensity-to-engage models at scale
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