Lead Data Scientist

Snorkel AI · San Francisco

Data & AIHybridposted 2mo ago

About Snorkel

At Snorkel, we believe meaningful AI doesn’t start with the model, it starts with the data.

We’re on a mission to help enterprises transform expert knowledge into specialized AI at scale. The AI landscape has gone through incredible changes since 2015, when Snorkel started as a research project in the Stanford AI Lab, to the generative AI breakthroughs of today. But one thing has remained constant: the data you use to build AI is the key to achieving differentiation, high performance, and production-ready systems. We work with some of the world’s largest organizations to empower scientists, engineers, financial experts, product creators, journalists, and more to build custom AI with their data faster than ever before. Excited to help us redefine how AI is built? Apply to be the newest Snorkeler!

About the Role

This role is hybrid (3 days/week in office) in San Francisco, CA. Our Data & Analytics Platform team recently migrated from Redshift to Snowflake, enabled 100+ users, and centralized all business data in under three months. We are a lean team with a clear remit: ensure a single source of truth for all business data. With company-wide Snowflake adoption complete, we are hiring a Lead Data Scientist to expand our mandate to Generative AI Analytics and Snorkel’s highest-leverage data science problems.

This is a senior individual contributor role with no direct reports; just ownership, autonomy, and impact from pioneering new insights and models and building our semantic layer, supply/demand matching algorithms, forecasting models, and other data science foundations that compound.

How you'll allocate your time (estimates subject to change):

40%: Building and maintaining Generative AI Analytics
40%: Critical-path data science projects
20%: Partnering with Engineers, PMs, DaaS operational leads, and Finance

What You'll Do

Own Generative AI Analytics: Build and maintain end-to-end infra (semantic layer, LLM tooling, evals, and agents) to analytically empower every team at Snorkel.
Protect Quality: Work with Engineering and the Fraud Operations Lead to build, unify inputs for, and deploy fraud detection and contributor quality models.
Optimize Marketplace: Architect search, ranking, and recommendation models to match project needs for Expert Contributors across domains and geographies.
Improve Forecasting: Build predictive models to help Strategy & Operations and Finance elevate forecast accuracy with signals from across the business.
Identify Leverage: Surface the next high-value data science opportunities at Snorkel and build the case for their prioritization with the Head of Data.
Advise Leadership: Be a trusted thought partner to the Head of Data and leaders of other teams on data architecture, applied data science, and AI.

Qualifications

5+ years: data science or related experience, with a track record of shipping forecasting, ranking, recommendation, or similar models into production.
Tech Stack: SQL, Snowflake or a similar data warehouse, and Python experience.
Modern AI Tools: Experience deploying modern AI tools (semantic layers, LLMs, evaluation frameworks) reliably into production.
Engineering Collaboration: Proven ability to partner with Engineering teams to bridge the gap from prototype to production system.
Agency: Strong track record of impact without a large team or detailed roadmap.
0-to-1 Mindset: Comfortable building foundational systems from scratch in environments where data infrastructure is still maturing.
Partnership: Genuinely values engaging technical and operational stakeholders to fully understand a problem and build data-driven solutions.

Bonus Points: Experience with Streamlit, Snowflake Cortex, AI/data labeling, A/B testing, and two-sided marketplace or data product business models.

Pay Transparency Notice: Depending on your work location, the target annual salary for this position can range as detailed below. Snorkel also includes benefits (including medical, dental, vision and 401(k)). All offers include equity compensation in the form of employee stock options. This role is hybrid (3 days/week in office) in San Francisco, CA.

Pay Range $130,000-$200,000

Be Your Best at Snorkel

Joining Snorkel AI means becoming part of a company that has market proven solutions, robust funding, and is scaling rapidly—offering a unique combination of stability and the excitement of high growth. As a member of our team, you’ll have meaningful opportunities to shape priorities and initiatives, influence key strategic decisions, and directly impact our ongoing success. Whether you’re looking to deepen your technical expertise, explore leadership opportunities, or learn new skills across multiple functions, you’re fully supported in building your career in an environment designed for growth, learning, and shared success.

Snorkel AI is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and is committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. Snorkel AI embraces diversity and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment. Snorkel AI prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, performance, merit, and business need.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.