Applied Scientist Jobs in Illinois
Applied Scientist jobs in Illinois are actively sought across machine learning, natural language processing, and data-driven product development, with demand ranging from entry-level research roles through senior and principal positions. Chicago leads hiring volume, with Urbana-Champaign and Peoria adding significant depth through research institutions and industrial tech. Established employers such as Motorola Solutions, Caterpillar, and Discover Financial Services maintain longstanding applied science teams in Illinois, particularly in areas like predictive modeling, computer vision, and optimization. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Showing 5 of 8+ Applied Scientist jobs
INTRODUCTION
SentiLink provides innovative identity and risk solutions, empowering institutions and individuals to transact with confidence. We’re building the future of identity verification in the United States replacing a clunky, ineffective, and expensive status quo with solutions that are 10x faster, smarter, and more accurate. We’ve seen tremendous traction and are growing extremely quickly. Our real-time APIs have helped verify hundreds of millions of identities, starting with financial services and rapidly expanding into new markets. SentiLink is backed by world-class investors including Craft Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NYCA, and Max Levchin. We’ve earned recognition from TechCrunch, CNBC, Bloomberg, Forbes, Business Insider, PYMNTS, American Banker, LendIt, and have been named to the Forbes Fintech 50. We have also been named a 2026 FICO Industry Vanguard Decision Award Winner. Last but not least, we’ve even made history - we were the first company to go live with the eCBSV and testified before the United States House of Representatives on the future of identity. SentiLink supports a variety of ways to work, ranging from fully remote to in-office. We operate as a digital-first company with strong collaboration across the U.S. and India. We maintain physical offices in Austin, San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Chicago in the U.S., and in Gurugram (Delhi) and Bengaluru in India. If you’re located near one of these offices, we would love for you to spend time in the office regularly. Some roles are hybrid or in-office by design. For example, our engineering team in India works primarily from our Gurugram office.
ROLE
As an Applied Scientist at SentiLink, you will build our core products: models that identify fraudsters and also advance our growing suite of products in financial risk. This role is designed for new PhD graduates or early-career researchers interested in applying machine learning to real-world fraud detection. You'll build and ship machine learning models in a production environment, gaining hands-on experience across the full ML lifecycle, from research and development to deployment at scale. If you're looking for real-world AI and ML exposure in an industry setting, not just research papers, this is it.
We Have Open Roles On Multiple Teams Including
- Emerging Products - focuses on 0-to-1 development of new offerings brought to market
- Application Fraud - analyzes the foundational elements of consumer financial applications to detect all forms of fraud
- Identity - resolves identities across massive, often conflicting data sources (both digital and physical) and generates risk models from limited information
You will be relied upon to be technically capable and the definitive owner of your respective domain. You will often work on projects with high visibility and impact that require deep domain understanding, critical thinking, and strong technical abilities. You will work with teams across the company to research new types of fraud, develop new products, and provide analysis to drive sales and marketing. This is a full-stack data science role, involving model development, analysis, and writing production code. You should be interested in having end-to-end ownership and a fast-moving environment where deep domain understanding drives development and unusual insights drive our competitive advantage rather than optimization of new machine learning methodologies. This role can be remote within the U.S., with a strong preference for candidates who can work from our Austin, San Francisco, or New York offices.
TECHNOLOGIES:
Python 3, PostgreSQL, and AWS infrastructure (EC2, S3, RDS, Redshift, etc.)
Responsibilities
- Develop and maintain SentiLink’s fraud detection models through the full model development lifespan: from data acquisition decisions through featurization, focusing labeling resources, model training, experimentation, productionalization, and monitoring.
- Build foundational modeling to drive SentiLink’s expanding suite of Fraud and Financial Risk products.
- Research new types of fraud and develop new SentiLink products around identity verification.
- Achieve success by researching / developing through iteration, integration of new data sources, and inventive feature engineering.
- Write production-ready code that can be relied on for real-time decision making by our partners.
- Design, perform, and present analyses that will inform data acquisition, product development, risk operations priorities, marketing, and sales efforts.
- Work with engineering, risk operations, and data acquisitions to access necessary data, maintain data quality, and support data access.
REQUIREMENTS
- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field or equivalent experience/research
- Strong foundation in machine learning, statistics, or applied data science
- Experience with Python and common data science tools through coursework, research, internships, or personal projects
- Demonstrated ability to analyze complex problems and build data-driven solutions
- Strong communication skills and ability to explain technical ideas clearly
- Interest in learning deeply about fraud, identity, and financial risk systems
- Ability to write clean, maintainable code
- Strong attention to detail and curiosity about real-world data problems
- Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States and must live in the United States
- Thrive in a fast-paced environment characterized by the need to solve extremely varied, high impact, open-ended problems
SALARY RANGE
$120,000/year - $220,000/year + equity + benefits
Note: This salary range is inclusive of multiple career levels, and the actual base salary within that range will be determined by several components including but not limited to the individual's education, experience, skills, and qualifications.
PERKS
- Employer paid group health insurance for you and your dependents
- 401(k) plan with employer match (or equivalent for non US-based roles)
- Flexible paid time off
- Regular company-wide in-person events
- Home office stipend, and more!
CORPORATE VALUES
- Follow Through
- Deep Understanding
- Whatever It Takes
- Do Something Smart
INTRODUCTION
SentiLink provides innovative identity and risk solutions, empowering institutions and individuals to transact with confidence. We’re building the future of identity verification in the United States replacing a clunky, ineffective, and expensive status quo with solutions that are 10x faster, smarter, and more accurate. We’ve seen tremendous traction and are growing extremely quickly. Our real-time APIs have helped verify hundreds of millions of identities, starting with financial services and rapidly expanding into new markets. SentiLink is backed by world-class investors including Craft Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NYCA, and Max Levchin. We’ve earned recognition from TechCrunch, CNBC, Bloomberg, Forbes, Business Insider, PYMNTS, American Banker, LendIt, and have been named to the Forbes Fintech 50. We have also been named a 2026 FICO Industry Vanguard Decision Award Winner. Last but not least, we’ve even made history - we were the first company to go live with the eCBSV and testified before the United States House of Representatives on the future of identity. SentiLink supports a variety of ways to work, ranging from fully remote to in-office. We operate as a digital-first company with strong collaboration across the U.S. and India. We maintain physical offices in Austin, San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Chicago in the U.S., and in Gurugram (Delhi) and Bengaluru in India. If you’re located near one of these offices, we would love for you to spend time in the office regularly. Some roles are hybrid or in-office by design. For example, our engineering team in India works primarily from our Gurugram office.
ROLE
As an Applied Scientist at SentiLink, you will build our core products: models that identify fraudsters and also advance our growing suite of products in financial risk. This role is designed for new PhD graduates or early-career researchers interested in applying machine learning to real-world fraud detection. You'll build and ship machine learning models in a production environment, gaining hands-on experience across the full ML lifecycle, from research and development to deployment at scale. If you're looking for real-world AI and ML exposure in an industry setting, not just research papers, this is it.
We Have Open Roles On Multiple Teams Including
- Emerging Products - focuses on 0-to-1 development of new offerings brought to market
- Application Fraud - analyzes the foundational elements of consumer financial applications to detect all forms of fraud
- Identity - resolves identities across massive, often conflicting data sources (both digital and physical) and generates risk models from limited information
You will be relied upon to be technically capable and the definitive owner of your respective domain. You will often work on projects with high visibility and impact that require deep domain understanding, critical thinking, and strong technical abilities. You will work with teams across the company to research new types of fraud, develop new products, and provide analysis to drive sales and marketing. This is a full-stack data science role, involving model development, analysis, and writing production code. You should be interested in having end-to-end ownership and a fast-moving environment where deep domain understanding drives development and unusual insights drive our competitive advantage rather than optimization of new machine learning methodologies. This role can be remote within the U.S., with a strong preference for candidates who can work from our Austin, San Francisco, or New York offices.
TECHNOLOGIES:
Python 3, PostgreSQL, and AWS infrastructure (EC2, S3, RDS, Redshift, etc.)
Responsibilities
- Develop and maintain SentiLink’s fraud detection models through the full model development lifespan: from data acquisition decisions through featurization, focusing labeling resources, model training, experimentation, productionalization, and monitoring.
- Build foundational modeling to drive SentiLink’s expanding suite of Fraud and Financial Risk products.
- Research new types of fraud and develop new SentiLink products around identity verification.
- Achieve success by researching / developing through iteration, integration of new data sources, and inventive feature engineering.
- Write production-ready code that can be relied on for real-time decision making by our partners.
- Design, perform, and present analyses that will inform data acquisition, product development, risk operations priorities, marketing, and sales efforts.
- Work with engineering, risk operations, and data acquisitions to access necessary data, maintain data quality, and support data access.
REQUIREMENTS
- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field or equivalent experience/research
- Strong foundation in machine learning, statistics, or applied data science
- Experience with Python and common data science tools through coursework, research, internships, or personal projects
- Demonstrated ability to analyze complex problems and build data-driven solutions
- Strong communication skills and ability to explain technical ideas clearly
- Interest in learning deeply about fraud, identity, and financial risk systems
- Ability to write clean, maintainable code
- Strong attention to detail and curiosity about real-world data problems
- Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States and must live in the United States
- Thrive in a fast-paced environment characterized by the need to solve extremely varied, high impact, open-ended problems
SALARY RANGE
$120,000/year - $220,000/year + equity + benefits
Note: This salary range is inclusive of multiple career levels, and the actual base salary within that range will be determined by several components including but not limited to the individual's education, experience, skills, and qualifications.
PERKS
- Employer paid group health insurance for you and your dependents
- 401(k) plan with employer match (or equivalent for non US-based roles)
- Flexible paid time off
- Regular company-wide in-person events
- Home office stipend, and more!
CORPORATE VALUES
- Follow Through
- Deep Understanding
- Whatever It Takes
- Do Something Smart
See All 8 Applied Scientist Jobs in Illinois
Find roles in Illinois that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Applied Scientist JobsApplied Scientist Jobs by City in Illinois
Where Illinois roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Applied Scientist Job Market in Illinois
A snapshot from current Illinois openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Transportation & Logistics
What Illinois Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in applied scientist jobs across Illinois.
- Master's or PhD in computer science, statistics, or a closely related quantitative field
- Demonstrated experience building and deploying machine learning models in production environments
- Proficiency in Python and familiarity with frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or scikit-learn
- Ability to translate ambiguous business problems into structured research and modeling approaches
- Experience collaborating with cross-functional engineering and product teams on model integration
- Strong written and verbal communication skills for presenting findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders
Applied Scientist Jobs in Illinois: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become an applied scientist in Illinois?
Applied scientist roles in Illinois require at minimum a master's degree in computer science, machine learning, statistics, or a related quantitative field, though many senior positions expect a PhD. Illinois has no state-issued license specific to this role. Most employers look for a strong portfolio of research or production ML work. University of Illinois and Northwestern produce many candidates who enter the field through industry research labs or tech-focused companies headquartered in Chicago and surrounding suburbs.
How much do applied scientists make in Illinois?
Applied scientists in Illinois earn a median of about $106,560 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $68,810 for the lowest 10% to over $168,880 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire applied scientists in Illinois?
Employers hiring applied scientists in Illinois right now include SentiLink, Relativity, and Uber Freight US, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of August 2026. Illinois's concentration of fintech, enterprise software, and industrial technology firms means applied scientists work on problems ranging from fraud detection and risk modeling to supply chain optimization and autonomous systems.
Which Illinois cities have the most applied scientist jobs?
Chicago and Illinois have the most applied scientist openings in Illinois. Chicago drives the majority of volume through its dense cluster of fintech firms, enterprise tech companies, and corporate headquarters, while Urbana-Champaign adds meaningful research-oriented roles tied to the University of Illinois and nearby technology spinouts, and Peoria reflects Caterpillar's long-running investment in industrial AI and predictive analytics.
Are there remote applied scientist jobs in Illinois?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 100% of applied scientist openings tied to Illinois are remote or hybrid as of August 2026, reflecting how much of the work centers on modeling, experimentation, and code rather than physical presence. Research and experimentation phases tend to be the most remote-compatible, while roles requiring close collaboration on product deployment often follow a hybrid schedule.
How can I get hired as an applied scientist in Illinois with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is a strong graduate research portfolio combined with internships at Illinois-based companies or national labs such as Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont. Entry-level titles like junior machine learning engineer or research scientist associate appear at larger Chicago employers and provide a foothold. Candidates transitioning from data analyst or software engineer roles gain an edge by showcasing independent modeling projects. A completed thesis, open-source contributions, or a Kaggle competition placement significantly strengthen applications for new graduates.
Where can I find and apply to applied scientist jobs in Illinois?
You can find and apply to applied scientist jobs in Illinois on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings tied to Illinois employers. Find roles that fit your background and apply directly through each listing without extra steps in between.
See All 8 Applied Scientist Jobs in Illinois
Find roles in Illinois that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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