Director of Data Science & LLMs - Financial Services Job New York New York USA,IT/Tech

Location: New York

Director of Data Science & LLMs
- Financial Services Director of Data Science & LLMs
- Financial Services

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Business Manager
- Machine Learning, LLMs, Generative AI & MLOps at Harnham

Director of Data Science & LLMs
- Financial Services

Location: Hybrid in New York, New York

Compensation: $300,000 – $325,000 base salary + performance bonus + equity

ABOUT THE COMPANY

We are partnered with a high-growth company at the intersection of AI, legal tech, and financial services, fundamentally transforming how regulated industries leverage language models and machine learning. This organization is building sophisticated NLP/LLM systems to streamline complex workflows for legal and financial professionals.

With executive-level support and increasing product demand, they’re seeking a Director of Data Science to lead strategy, research, and engineering execution across NLP and LLM initiatives. This is a rare opportunity to drive technical vision, shape an elite ML team, and build impactful AI systems from the ground up in a regulated space.

THE ROLE

As Director of Data Science, you’ll be responsible for setting the long-term machine learning roadmap, leading technical teams, and ensuring the successful development and deployment of scalable NLP solutions. You will report directly to the Head of AI and work closely with executive leadership, product, and engineering.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership: Define the ML vision and roadmap for NLP and LLM-based solutions, aligned with company goals and customer needs.
Team Building & Management: Hire, mentor, and manage a team of ML engineers and applied scientists. Foster a high-performing, collaborative environment.
Technical Oversight: Guide end-to-end model development—from research and prototyping through production deployment, performance monitoring, and continuous optimization.
Cross-Functional Influence: Collaborate with product, legal, engineering, and design teams to translate business needs into scalable AI solutions.
Innovation: Stay ahead of the curve in LLM research and NLP advancements. Evaluate and implement new technologies and tools to maintain technical edge.
Thought Leadership: Represent the company in industry discussions, conferences, and partner conversations. Champion best practices in ethical and responsible AI.
Operational Excellence: Ensure strong MLOps foundations are in place, including CI/CD, data governance, model monitoring, and security practices.

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

Required Qualifications:

10+ years of experience in machine learning and software engineering, with at least 4+ years in a leadership or managerial role.
Demonstrated success building and leading teams that develop and deploy NLP/LLM models at scale.
Deep expertise in Python, ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, Tensor Flow), and modern NLP tools (e.g., Hugging Face Transformers, spaCy).
Experience designing and implementing ML systems in production, especially with large language models (e.g., GPT, BERT, T5).
Proven ability to align technical initiatives with business goals, working cross-functionally with product and exec teams.
Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and scalable ML pipelines.
PhD or Master’s degree in Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
Publication or open-source contributions in NLP/ML domains (e.g., ACL, NeurIPS, ICLR, EMNLP) a plus.

THE BENEFITS

Remote-First Culture: Work from anywhere in the United States or Canada.
Elite Talent Environment: Collaborate with top-tier researchers, engineers, and domain experts.
Comprehensive Benefits: Full health,…