Head of Data Science Jobs
Head of Data Science jobs are open across technology, finance, healthcare, and retail, from senior individual contributor to VP-level leadership, with specializations in machine learning, applied AI, and data platform strategy. Scan the live roles below and apply to whichever ones fit.
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Why Socure?
Socure is building the identity trust infrastructure for the digital economy — verifying 100% of good identities in real time and stopping fraud before it starts. The mission is big, the problems are complex, and the impact is felt by businesses, governments, and millions of people every day.
We hire people who want that level of responsibility. People who move fast, think critically, act like owners, and care deeply about solving customer problems with precision. If you want predictability or narrow scope, this won’t be your place. If you want to help build the future of identity with a team that holds a high bar for itself — keep reading.
About Socure
Socure is building the identity trust infrastructure for the digital economy—verifying 100% of good identities in real time and stopping fraud before it starts. The mission is big, the problems are complex, and the impact is felt by businesses, governments, and millions of people every day.
We hire people who want that level of responsibility. People who move fast, think critically, act like owners, and care deeply about solving customer problems with precision. If you want predictability or narrow scope, this won’t be your place. If you want to help build the future of identity and compliance with a team that holds a high bar for itself, keep reading.
Role Overview
We are seeking a highly driven, innovative data science leader to build and scale AI-powered compliance products. As Head of Data Science, Compliance Products, you will set the data science vision and lead execution across KYC, International KYC, Advanced Prefill, Deceased Check, Global Watchlist Screening and Monitoring, and Anti-Money Laundering (AML).
You will lead teams delivering accurate, explainable, and production-ready models that help customers verify people, complete onboarding, screen against global watchlists, monitor risk, and meet evolving compliance needs. You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Risk, Operations, and Go-to-Market leaders to turn complex customer and regulatory problems into measurable product outcomes. This role calls for a leader who combines strong technical judgment, team-building, and disciplined execution in high-stakes, data-rich environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and own the data science strategy and roadmap for Compliance Products, aligning investments to customer outcomes, product priorities, and business goals.
- Lead, grow, and develop a high-performing team of data scientists and applied researchers; set a high bar for technical quality, collaboration, speed, and accountability.
- Advance machine learning and decisioning across KYC and International KYC, including identity verification, risk assessment, and onboarding workflows.
- Improve Advanced Prefill through methods that select, validate, and rank relevant data to reduce customer effort while maintaining accuracy and transparency.
- Develop and improve deceased-person detection and associated risk signals using reliable data, robust evaluation, and appropriate safeguards.
- Build and scale Global Watchlist Screening and Monitoring capabilities, including entity matching, alert prioritization, ongoing monitoring, and false-positive reduction across geographies and data sources.
- Advance AML and compliance risk models that help customers identify and investigate potentially suspicious activity, with clear performance measurement and appropriate human review.
- Establish rigorous evaluation practices, including representative test data, segment-level performance, ongoing monitoring, drift detection, and feedback loops from customer and operations outcomes.
- Own the end-to-end model lifecycle: data strategy, feature development, experimentation, validation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
- Ensure models and AI-enabled workflows are explainable, auditable, reliable, and designed to support applicable compliance and governance requirements.
- Assess where automation and agent-assisted workflows can improve screening, monitoring, and investigations; define suitable human oversight and operational controls.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Risk, Operations, Legal/Compliance, and Go-to-Market teams to shape roadmaps and deliver scalable products.
- Serve as a senior technical partner to customers and executives, explaining model behavior, performance, limitations, and trade-offs in clear terms.
- Represent Socure externally as a thought leader in applied data science for identity verification and compliance.
Key Competencies & Qualifications
- Advanced degree (MS or PhD preferred) in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related field.
- 10+ years of experience in data science and machine learning, including a strong record of delivering production systems at scale.
- Significant experience in compliance, KYC/AML, watchlist screening, identity verification, fraud prevention, or risk modeling in financial services, fintech, or an adjacent domain.
- Proven experience leading and developing high-performing data science teams.
- Strong understanding of modern machine learning, statistical modeling, entity matching, information extraction, and decision systems.
- Experience working with heterogeneous and large-scale data, including structured data, text, and third-party data sources.
- Demonstrated ability to move ambiguous, high-impact problems from discovery to production while balancing rigor, speed, and business outcomes.
- Hands-on experience with Python and modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch; experience with Apache Spark or comparable distributed data systems.
- Practical understanding of model evaluation, monitoring, explainability, governance, and responsible deployment in regulated or high-stakes settings.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex systems and trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience in customer-facing technical discussions, executive briefings, or public speaking is preferred.
Why Socure?
- Work on challenging, high-impact problems in identity verification and financial crime prevention.
- Build data science capabilities behind products used in important customer compliance workflows.
- Join a fast-moving, high-caliber team that values innovation, ownership, and customer impact.
- Competitive compensation, equity, and benefits.
- Help shape trusted digital experiences at global scale.
Please note that we can only hire within ~45 miles of San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Miami. We are unable to provide sponsorship support now or in the future.
Socure is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity in all its forms within our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you need an accommodation during any stage of the application or hiring process, including interview or onboarding support, please reach out to your Socure recruiting partner directly.
Socure is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity in all its forms within our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
If you need an accommodation during any stage of the application or hiring process—including interview or onboarding support—please reach out to your Socure recruiting partner directly.
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Compensation Range: $250K - $300K
Why Socure?
Socure is building the identity trust infrastructure for the digital economy — verifying 100% of good identities in real time and stopping fraud before it starts. The mission is big, the problems are complex, and the impact is felt by businesses, governments, and millions of people every day.
We hire people who want that level of responsibility. People who move fast, think critically, act like owners, and care deeply about solving customer problems with precision. If you want predictability or narrow scope, this won’t be your place. If you want to help build the future of identity with a team that holds a high bar for itself — keep reading.
About Socure
Socure is building the identity trust infrastructure for the digital economy—verifying 100% of good identities in real time and stopping fraud before it starts. The mission is big, the problems are complex, and the impact is felt by businesses, governments, and millions of people every day.
We hire people who want that level of responsibility. People who move fast, think critically, act like owners, and care deeply about solving customer problems with precision. If you want predictability or narrow scope, this won’t be your place. If you want to help build the future of identity and compliance with a team that holds a high bar for itself, keep reading.
Role Overview
We are seeking a highly driven, innovative data science leader to build and scale AI-powered compliance products. As Head of Data Science, Compliance Products, you will set the data science vision and lead execution across KYC, International KYC, Advanced Prefill, Deceased Check, Global Watchlist Screening and Monitoring, and Anti-Money Laundering (AML).
You will lead teams delivering accurate, explainable, and production-ready models that help customers verify people, complete onboarding, screen against global watchlists, monitor risk, and meet evolving compliance needs. You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Risk, Operations, and Go-to-Market leaders to turn complex customer and regulatory problems into measurable product outcomes. This role calls for a leader who combines strong technical judgment, team-building, and disciplined execution in high-stakes, data-rich environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and own the data science strategy and roadmap for Compliance Products, aligning investments to customer outcomes, product priorities, and business goals.
- Lead, grow, and develop a high-performing team of data scientists and applied researchers; set a high bar for technical quality, collaboration, speed, and accountability.
- Advance machine learning and decisioning across KYC and International KYC, including identity verification, risk assessment, and onboarding workflows.
- Improve Advanced Prefill through methods that select, validate, and rank relevant data to reduce customer effort while maintaining accuracy and transparency.
- Develop and improve deceased-person detection and associated risk signals using reliable data, robust evaluation, and appropriate safeguards.
- Build and scale Global Watchlist Screening and Monitoring capabilities, including entity matching, alert prioritization, ongoing monitoring, and false-positive reduction across geographies and data sources.
- Advance AML and compliance risk models that help customers identify and investigate potentially suspicious activity, with clear performance measurement and appropriate human review.
- Establish rigorous evaluation practices, including representative test data, segment-level performance, ongoing monitoring, drift detection, and feedback loops from customer and operations outcomes.
- Own the end-to-end model lifecycle: data strategy, feature development, experimentation, validation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
- Ensure models and AI-enabled workflows are explainable, auditable, reliable, and designed to support applicable compliance and governance requirements.
- Assess where automation and agent-assisted workflows can improve screening, monitoring, and investigations; define suitable human oversight and operational controls.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Risk, Operations, Legal/Compliance, and Go-to-Market teams to shape roadmaps and deliver scalable products.
- Serve as a senior technical partner to customers and executives, explaining model behavior, performance, limitations, and trade-offs in clear terms.
- Represent Socure externally as a thought leader in applied data science for identity verification and compliance.
Key Competencies & Qualifications
- Advanced degree (MS or PhD preferred) in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related field.
- 10+ years of experience in data science and machine learning, including a strong record of delivering production systems at scale.
- Significant experience in compliance, KYC/AML, watchlist screening, identity verification, fraud prevention, or risk modeling in financial services, fintech, or an adjacent domain.
- Proven experience leading and developing high-performing data science teams.
- Strong understanding of modern machine learning, statistical modeling, entity matching, information extraction, and decision systems.
- Experience working with heterogeneous and large-scale data, including structured data, text, and third-party data sources.
- Demonstrated ability to move ambiguous, high-impact problems from discovery to production while balancing rigor, speed, and business outcomes.
- Hands-on experience with Python and modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch; experience with Apache Spark or comparable distributed data systems.
- Practical understanding of model evaluation, monitoring, explainability, governance, and responsible deployment in regulated or high-stakes settings.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex systems and trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience in customer-facing technical discussions, executive briefings, or public speaking is preferred.
Why Socure?
- Work on challenging, high-impact problems in identity verification and financial crime prevention.
- Build data science capabilities behind products used in important customer compliance workflows.
- Join a fast-moving, high-caliber team that values innovation, ownership, and customer impact.
- Competitive compensation, equity, and benefits.
- Help shape trusted digital experiences at global scale.
Please note that we can only hire within ~45 miles of San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Miami. We are unable to provide sponsorship support now or in the future.
Socure is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity in all its forms within our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you need an accommodation during any stage of the application or hiring process, including interview or onboarding support, please reach out to your Socure recruiting partner directly.
Socure is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity in all its forms within our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
If you need an accommodation during any stage of the application or hiring process—including interview or onboarding support—please reach out to your Socure recruiting partner directly.
Follow Us!
YouTube | LinkedIn | X (Twitter) | Facebook
Compensation Range: $250K - $300K
See All 10 Head of Data Science Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Head of Data Science JobsHead of Data Science Job Market
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Banking & Financial Services
- Food & Beverage
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in head of data science jobs.
- 7 or more years of experience in data science with at least 3 in a leadership role
- Proficiency in Python and SQL with hands-on experience building and deploying ML models
- Experience managing and growing a team of data scientists or ML engineers
- Demonstrated ability to translate business problems into data science initiatives and roadmaps
- Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure and MLOps tooling
- Advanced degree in statistics, computer science, mathematics, or a related quantitative field
Tips for Your Head of Data Science Job Search
Lead your resume with business outcomes
Hiring committees for head of data science roles want to see revenue impact, cost reduction, or product improvements you drove, not just model accuracy metrics. Frame each bullet around what changed in the business because of your work.
Show your team-building and org design experience
Most postings require proof you have hired, structured, and developed a data science team. List headcount you have managed, how you organized the function, and any decisions you made about staffing models or tooling standards.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists head of data science openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Tailor applications to the company data maturity
A seed-stage startup hiring its first head of data science needs a builder. A Series C or enterprise company needs a scaler. Read the job description closely for signals like 'build from scratch' or 'mature platform' and adjust your positioning accordingly.
Prepare a data strategy presentation for final rounds
Many head of data science interviews end with a live presentation to the executive team. Prepare a 30-day, 60-day, 90-day framework that covers team assessment, quick wins, and a longer-term roadmap you can adapt to any company's context.
Negotiate scope alongside compensation
At this level, reporting structure, budget authority, and team size affect your ability to deliver. Before accepting, confirm whether you report to the CTO or CPO, what your hiring budget is, and whether data engineering falls under your remit.
Head of Data Science Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies are hiring the most head of data sciences?
The companies hiring the most head of data sciences right now include Gusto, Airwallex, and Mars, with the largest share of openings in California, Massachusetts, and Colorado, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Demand is especially concentrated in technology, financial services, and healthcare organizations scaling their AI and analytics functions.
How many head of data science jobs are remote?
About 67% of head of data science openings are fully remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting strong demand for senior data science leadership across distributed organizations. Roles focused on applied machine learning research and platform strategy tend to have the highest remote availability, while positions requiring close collaboration with product and engineering leadership are more likely to require on-site presence.
How do you become a head of data science?
Most heads of data science move up from senior or staff data scientist roles by taking on team lead or manager responsibilities first. Build a record of delivering cross-functional projects, then step into managing a small team. Develop fluency in executive communication, roadmap planning, and stakeholder alignment, since the role is as much about strategy and leadership as it is about technical depth.
Can I get a head of data science role with limited leadership experience?
It is possible at smaller companies or early-stage startups that need a first data science hire with a path to leadership. Strengthen your case by leading a high-visibility project, mentoring junior team members, and presenting data strategy recommendations to senior stakeholders. Framing yourself as a builder who can establish the function from scratch is more persuasive than competing on management tenure you do not yet have.
What does the head of data science interview process look like?
The process typically starts with a recruiter screen, followed by a technical conversation covering modeling approaches and past project decisions. A hiring manager interview then focuses on leadership philosophy, team structure, and business acumen. Final rounds usually include a panel with cross-functional stakeholders and a live strategy presentation where you outline how you would approach the role in the first several months.
Where can I find and apply to head of data science jobs?
You can find and apply to head of data science jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from across the United States. Search the roles available, find the ones that fit your background and goals, and apply directly to each listing from the page.
See All 10 Head of Data Science Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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