Principal Data Scientist

The next part of your journey is right around the corner — with The Standard.

A genuine desire to make a difference in the lives of others is the foundation for everything we do. With a customer-first mindset and an intentional focus on building strong teams across the nation, we’ve been able to uphold our legacy of financial stability while investing in new, innovative technologies that support the needs of our customers. Our high-performance culture focused on operational excellence thrives thanks to remarkable people united by compassion and a customer-first commitment. Are you ready to make a difference?

Job Summary

The Standard is seeking a Principal Data Scientist to join the Applied AI team in the successful development and implementation of AI-powered products at the Standard.

You will be part of an innovative team responsible for the development and implementation of AI and ML solutions to augment business processes and empower employees. As a leader in AI initiatives, you will drive enterprise AI systems at scale, optimizing deployment patterns, ensuring scalability, and organizational innovation. You will collaborate closely with expert Applied Scientists, Principal Engineers, Software Engineers, Architects, and business area leaders. In this highly visible role, you will mentor Applied Scientists and collaborate with engineering & business teams to deliver highly impactful solutions at scale.

Staying current with the evolving AI landscape, you will leverage the latest technologies to support cutting-edge innovation across our proprietary AI products. You will ultimately develop an information advantage through AI systems and capability capabilities, while working to develop the team’s reputation as highly skilled experts in data science. Along the way, you will actively partner to grow a company-wide educational program for Data Science and ML, foster company-wide consumption of AI services, and implement industry best practices in data science product organizations.

This role is critical to the evangelization of AI at The Standard and requires well-refined technical skills that bridge software engineering and data science, a passion for growth and learning, a strong sense of independent accountability, and an innate ability to work with a diverse, multi-functional team. Join a talented team of Data Science and AI professionals, responsible for modernizing how The Standard executes its core promise to customers through AI services.

Skills and Background You’ll Need

• EDUCATION: A Bachelor’s degree is required. A Master’s or PhD in quantitative fields, or related is preferred.
• EXPERIENCE: 8-10 years’ experience delivering highly effective data science models with quantifiable impact at scale. Financial services or insurance industry is a bonus.
• Strong technical command of the tools and languages used to deliver high impact AI/ML solutions into production (Object Oriented Programming, Python, PyTorch, Spark, Azure, ADO Pipelines, Databricks jobs, MLFlow, DSPy). Successfully led the delivery of multiple stable releases in ML and AI domain.
• Expert knowledge of machine learning and AI theory (Recommendation Systems, Foundation Models, Ensemble RAG method, fine-tuning techniques, Neural Networks, NLP, statistical techniques, etc.) and the relevancy of their applications to targeted use cases. A curious and inquisitive mind, capable of ideating and driving enhancements that simplify, modernize, and standardize the model architectures. Experience with MLOps best practices is preferred.
• Unstructured data preprocessing (text and images) knowledge is preferred.
• Ability to demonstrate strong scientific problem solving processes.
• Experience guiding, coaching, and mentoring technical peers. As a highly technical individual, you will be able to provide technical oversight for building and maintaining production-quality code.
• Proven communication and collaboration skills that enable you to earn trust at all levels of the organization, yielding an ability to influence, especially to non-technical stakeholders.

Key Behaviors of a Successful Candidate

• Driving Success – Sets goals that inspire others; demonstrates a high level of ambition to achieve outstanding results.
• Improvement Mindset – Identifies the interrelatedness of work activities; targets important areas for improvement across business unit/functions.
• Winning Together - Makes decisions in partnership with impacted business unit/function leaders with the goals of the organization in mind; acts in the best interest of the organization.

#LI-Remote

We have built an enduring legacy of stability, financial strength and exceptional customer service through the contributions of the service-oriented people who choose to work at The Standard. To ensure we can attract and retain the best talent, when you join The Standard you can expect:

• A rich benefits package including medical, dental, vision and a 401(k) plan with matching company contributions

• An annual incentive bonus plan

• Generous paid time off including 11 holidays, 2 wellness days, and 8 volunteer hours annually — PTO increases with tenure

• A supportive, responsive management approach and opportunities for career growth and advancement 

• Paid parental leave and adoption/surrogacy assistance

• An employee giving program that double matches your donations to eligible nonprofits and schools

In addition to the competitive salary range below, our employee-focused benefits support work-life balance. Learn more about working at The Standard.

• Eligibility to participate in an incentive program is subject to the rules governing the program and plan. Any award depends on a variety of factors including individual and organizational performance.

Salary Range:

Standard Insurance Company, The Standard Life Insurance Company of New York, Standard Retirement Services, Inc., StanCorp Equities, Inc. and StanCorp Investment Advisers, Inc., marketed as The Standard, are Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employers. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status or any other condition protected by federal, state or local law. The Standard offers a drug and alcohol free work environment where possession, manufacture, transfer, offer, use of or being impaired by an illegal substance while on Standard property, or in other cases which the company believes might affect operations, safety or reputation of the company is prohibited. The Standard requires a criminal background investigation, employment, education and licensing verification as a condition of employment. All employees of The Standard must be bondable.