Executive Director, Principal AI Data Scientist

TWG Global AI•Santa Monica, CA

7h•$300,000 - $390,000•Hybrid

About The Position

At TWG Group Holdings, LLC (“TWG Global”), we drive innovation and business transformation across a range of industries—including financial services, insurance, technology, media, and sports—by leveraging data and AI as core assets. Our AI-first, cloud-native approach delivers real-time intelligence and interactive business applications, empowering informed decision-making for both customers and employees. We prioritize responsible data and AI practices, ensuring ethical standards and regulatory compliance. Our decentralized structure enables each business unit to operate autonomously, supported by a central AI Solutions Group, while strategic partnerships with leading data and AI vendors fuel game-changing efforts in marketing, operations, and product development. You will collaborate with management to advance our data and analytics transformation, enhance productivity, and enable agile, data-driven decisions. By leveraging relationships with top tech startups and universities, you will help create competitive advantages and drive enterprise innovation. At TWG Global, your contributions will support our goal of sustained growth and superior returns, as we deliver rare value and impact across our businesses. The Role As Executive Director on the AI Science team, you will lead the design and execution of high-impact AI and data science initiatives that directly shape TWG Global’s competitive advantage. Reporting to the Managing Director of AI & Data, you will act as a senior technical leader—driving enterprise-critical projects, setting technical direction, and mentoring a small team of data scientists. You will partner closely with senior executives across the firm to align data science solutions with strategic priorities, ensuring adoption of advanced AI methods in a responsible and scalable way. This role requires deep technical expertise coupled with the ability to influence decision-makers and deliver measurable outcomes at the enterprise level.

Requirements

10–12+ years of experience in data science or machine learning, with proven delivery of enterprise-impact projects.
Strong expertise in advanced machine learning, causal inference, deep learning, and statistical modelling.
Demonstrated success leading end-to-end projects and influencing senior stakeholders.
Hands-on technical depth in Python (or R), cloud-based platforms, and modern ML frameworks.
Experience mentoring or leading small, high-performing teams.
PhD in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative discipline.
Recognized as a technical thought leader through publications, external talks, or open-source contributions.

Nice To Haves

Experience working with Palantir platforms (Foundry, AIP, Ontology) to develop, analyze, and operationalize data-driven insights within enterprise-scale environments.
Publications in top-tier AI/ML or data science conferences or journals (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, AAAI, ACL, JASA).
Recognized contributions to the open-source data science / ML ecosystem (e.g., libraries, frameworks, toolkits, widely adopted notebooks).
Track record of thought leadership through invited talks, keynote presentations, or leadership roles in professional societies, conferences, or meetups.
Experience establishing standards for reproducibility, experimentation, and responsible AI.
Familiarity with vector databases, knowledge graphs, and LLM application frameworks for advanced analytics.
Cloud or AI/ML certifications (e.g., AWS ML Specialty, Google Cloud ML Engineer, Azure AI Engineer) are a plus.

Responsibilities

Lead execution of flagship AI/ML projects that drive measurable value in financial services and adjacent sectors.
Act as senior technical authority on advanced AI methods (generative AI, causal inference, LLM-based analytics, RAG, simulation).
Translate complex business challenges into enterprise-level data science solutions with tangible ROI.
Mentor and guide a small team of data scientists, fostering technical excellence, rigor, and responsible AI adoption.
Partner with business leaders, MDs, and executive committees to ensure AI initiatives align with firm-wide priorities.
Represent TWG Global in external technical forums and partnerships with universities, regulators, and technology leaders.
Define standards for experimentation, reproducibility, and governance of AI solutions.
Stay ahead of emerging trends in AI/ML, advising on adoption and firm-wide capability building.