Job Description

Applicants must be a resident and work from one of the following states: WA, OR, ID, OH, IL, NC, SC, FL, TX, or MNwith occasional travel to our headquarters, located in Seattle, WA.

Why We Need You:

We are seeking a Principal Data Scientist to lead the design, development, and deployment of advanced analytics and machine learning solutions across our insurance portfolio. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an experienced data scientist who can translate ambiguous business problems into scalable, production-ready models that drive measurable impact.

As a Principal Data Scientist, you will operate as a trusted technical advisor to senior leadership, set modeling and experimentation standards, mentor senior and staff-level data scientists, and influence the company's long-term data and AI strategy.

What You'll Be Doing:

Technical Leadership & Modeling

• Lead the development of advanced statistical and machine learning models across core insurance domains such as:
  • Pricing and rating
  • Underwriting and risk selection
  • Claims severity, frequency, and fraud detection
  • Customer lifetime value, retention, and growth
• Design end-to-end analytical solutions, from problem formulation and feature engineering to model deployment and monitoring.
• Champion best practices in model validation, explainability, fairness, and performance monitoring, aligned with regulatory and ethical standards.
• Evaluate and select appropriate modeling techniques (e.g., GLMs, gradient boosting, deep learning, survival analysis, Bayesian methods) based on business context.

Strategic Influence

• Partner with executives, product leaders, and actuarial teams to shape analytics strategy and identify high-impact opportunities.
• Translate complex analytical findings into clear, actionable insights for both technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Influence roadmap decisions by quantifying business impact, risk, and uncertainty.

Platform & Production Excellence

• Collaborate closely with data engineering and ML platform teams to ensure models are productionized effectively and maintained at scale.
• Define and promote standards for model reproducibility, documentation, testing, and lifecycle management.
• Contribute to the evolution of internal data science tooling, experimentation frameworks, and ML infrastructure.

Mentorship & Culture

• Serve as a technical mentor and role model for emerging data scientists.
• Raise the bar for analytical rigor, code quality, and scientific thinking across the organization.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and evidence-based decision-making.
• Demonstrate behaviors consistent with PEMCO's policies, values, code of ethics, and business conduct.
• Authentically support the PEMCO Brand and constantly are on the lookout for top talent to join us to achieve our Mission to Worry Less and Live More.
• Other duties as assigned.

What You'll Bring:

• B.A. or B.S. degree or equivalent work experience in a related field, such as Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, or Data Engineering.
• Master's degree or Ph.D. in a related field, such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or Machine Learning preferred.
• 10 years of enterprise-scale experience in designing, implementing, and deploying AI/ML models.
• 7 years of experience working with cloud-based AI platforms, including Azure Machine Learning, Databricks, and Snowflake.
• 7 years of experience in implementing both supervised and unsupervised learning techniques in real-world applications.
• Experience in the insurance industry, particularly in Auto, Home, and Umbrella insurance processes, underwriting, claims analysis, and risk assessment is required.
• Experience working with advanced AI frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, and Hugging Face transformers is preferred.
• Hands-on experience with Gen AI, RAG pipelines, Vector Databases, and Knowledge Graphs.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a deep understanding of statistical and mathematical principles.
• Strong experience in natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI applications.
• Expertise in MLOps, model lifecycle management, and AI model deployment at scale.
• Proficient in Python, PySpark, and SQL.
• Deep understanding of Azure Databricks, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Data Factory.
• Experience with distributed model training and serving on Databricks
• Familiarity with Azure OpenAI, LLM fine-tuning, or cognitive services is preferred.
• Expertise in both supervised and unsupervised learning techniques and the ability to implement AI/ML solutions that enhance data-driven decision-making in the insurance industry, particularly in Auto, Home, and Umbrella insurance.
• Familiarity with agile software delivery methodologies such as Scrum.

Compensation:

The pay range for this role is shown below. Compensation decisions are determined based on an individual's qualifications, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

• Greater Seattle area target pay range: $187,363-$228,999. The full pay range is $156,136-$260,226.
• Outside greater Seattle area target pay range: $165,352-$202,096. The full pay range is $137,793-$229,655.

Greater Seattle Area is defined as working within approximately 100 miles of Seattle.

Outside Greater Seattle is defined as working more than 100 miles from Seattle.

Benefits:

Regular part-time PEMCO employees working at least 24 hours per week and regular full-time PEMCO employees are eligible to elect coverage under medical, dental, and vision plans for themselves and their eligible family members with generous employer premium cost shares. In addition, as a benefits-eligible employee, you are:

• covered by employer-paid basic life and accidental death & dismemberment insurance policies as well as long- and short-term disability benefit coverages.
• eligible to participate in PEMCO's 401(k) plan, which includes a generous employer match (2 for 1 on the first 6% employee pre-tax and/or Roth deferral, up to federal maximums).

PEMCO provides the following paid leave programs for benefits-eligible employees in their first year of PEMCO employment:

• Vacation and eight (8) paid holidays.
• Granted four (4) floating holidays and up to ten (10) days of sick leave immediately upon hire (pro-rated based on hire date and full-time/part-time status).
• In addition, PEMCO provides paid time off for bereavement, jury duty, and employee volunteering in the community.

Other miscellaneous benefit programs offered by PEMCO include:

• Education Assistance Program after one year of service.
• Scholarship program for children of PEMCO employees after one year of service; children's birthday gift program
• Flexible Spending Accounts, Employee Assistance Program, and charitable gift matching

Other compensation depending on role, contributions, and performance may include:

• Discretionary bonuses.
• Tiered sales commissions and/or incentives