Director, Data Scientist

Why USAA?

At USAA, our mission is to empower our members to achieve financial security through highly competitive products, exceptional service and trusted advice. We seek to be the #1 choice for the military community and their families.

Embrace a fulfilling career at USAA, where our core values – honesty, integrity, loyalty and service – define how we treat each other and our members. Be part of what truly makes us special and impactful.

We are proud to support active-duty military spouses. USAA roles may offer remote or hybrid flexibility for active-duty military spouses consistent with applicable policy and business needs.

The Opportunity As a dedicated Director of Data Science, are you ready to lead the charge in transforming a major enterprise through the power of Generative AI, LLMs, and autonomous agent ecosystems? We are seeking a visionary Director of Data Science to architect and scale our next-generation AI capabilities. In this role, you will lead a high-performing team responsible for building reusable, horizontal AI platforms and solutions that drive enterprise-wide automation, innovation, and strategic differentiation.

You possess the agility to navigate rapidly shifting AI paradigms, the architectural vision to design scalable systems from ideation to production-grade performance, and the leadership to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and core business value. If you thrive at the intersection of AI strategy, technical execution, and organizational transformation, we want you to lead our future.

What you will do:

Acts as an enterprise AI thought leader and strategic advisor, shaping how the organization leverages generative AI, LLMs, and agentic workflows to drive competitive advantage and market differentiation.

Influences business, data, and technology executives to invest in, scale, and future-proof enterprise-wide horizontal AI capabilities through active participation in strategy, planning, and budgeting.

Directs and empowers a team of AI/Data Scientists and engineers to build and deploy scalable LLM applications, RAG pipelines, and autonomous agent systems in a fast-paced, agile environment.

Architecturally guides the team from ideation to performant production solutions, optimizing the AI lifecycle from prompt engineering and context management to model evaluation and inference cost-efficiency.

Champions the creation of modular, reusable horizontal AI capabilities and services that can be leveraged horizontally across disparate business units to solve complex challenges.

Partners closely with Enterprise Architecture and IT to establish modern AI infrastructure, tooling pipelines, and scalable cloud/on-premise deployment standards.

Ensures all AI models, agentic workflows, and generative solutions strictly adhere to emerging AI safety guidelines, model risk management (MRM) frameworks, data governance, and regulatory compliance.

Identifies and secures strategic resource needs, ranging from next-gen LLM API integrations and specialized 3rd-party toolsets to specialized hardware and talent investments.

Builds, inspires, and scales a world-class team of AI talent through intentional recruiting, technical mentorship, coaching, and performance management.

Ensures risks associated with AI operations (e.g., hallucinations, data leakage, security vulnerabilities, and autonomous agent drift) are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled.

What you have:8+ years of progressive experience in machine learning, advanced data science, and AI development—with a strong recent emphasis on deploying Generative AI, LLMs, or agentic systems to production—OR an Advanced Degree (Master’s or PhD) in Computer Science, AI, Data Science, or a quantitative STEM field with 6+ years of relevant experience.
3+ years of direct people leadership experience, building, managing, and inspiring high-performing technical teams in rapidly evolving tech landscapes.

Proven track record of architecting and delivering scalable, high-performance horizontal AI platforms or reusable capabilities that drive cross-enterprise transformation.

Exceptional strategic agility and flexibility, with a demonstrated history of successfully pivoting technical strategies and teams in response to rapid paradigm shifts in the AI ecosystem.

Deep technical background in modern AI frameworks and methodologies (e.g., Lang Chain, Llama Index, vector databases, fine-tuning, RAG architectures, prompt engineering patterns, and multi-agent…