Senior Data Scientist

Great American Insurance Group • Cincinnati, OH

9d • Hybrid

About The Position

Great American Risk Solutions (GARS), a growing wholesale excess and surplus insurance business focused on complex and specialized commercial risks, is seeking a Senior Data Scientist for its Analytics Team. The role provides technical leadership and strategic partnership to advance analytics delivery, modernize tools, and scale analytics capabilities across the business. The position applies advanced subject matter expertise to data science strategy and works independently with limited supervision, leading small to moderately complex projects from design through deployment and mentoring junior team members.

The Senior Data Scientist leads predictive modeling for underwriting, pricing, claims, and customer retention; analyzes complex datasets to identify business opportunities; and creates models, simulations, and optimization routines suited to each problem. The role also supports production model monitoring, data pipelines, automated reporting, dashboards, and AI, machine learning, and automation solutions. It partners with actuarial, underwriting, claims, product, and data engineering teams, advises business leaders, communicates insights to senior leadership, contributes to product roadmaps and agile planning, and ensures models meet regulatory and internal governance standards.

Employees in this role are expected to work on-site four days per week, with flexibility to work remotely one day. Core in-office days are Tuesday through Thursday, and the fourth in-office day is determined by business needs. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future employment visa sponsorship.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in data science, statistics, computer science, actuarial science, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent work experience.
• Generally, at least 6 years of experience exploring and manipulating large datasets, using structured and unstructured data sources, and applying predictive modeling, including taking models from concept to production.
• Proven experience in model optimization techniques, machine learning, and analytical programming.
• Expert proficiency in Python and core machine learning libraries such as scikit-learn, XGBoost, or LightGBM.
• Advanced proficiency creating, retrieving, and optimizing data using SQL in Snowflake or a comparable SQL database.
• Experience with a major cloud platform: AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with data pipeline tools such as Airflow or dbt.
• Strong proficiency in data visualization and dashboard development using Tableau or Power BI.
• Ability to present complex problems and solutions to senior leaders.
• Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future employment visa sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

• PhD in a related field.
• Experience with R.
• Experience with geospatial data, telematics, or catastrophe modeling.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, validation, and deployment of predictive models for underwriting, pricing, claims, and customer retention, from study design through production rollout.
• Analyze large, complex, high-dimensional structured and unstructured datasets to identify trends, patterns, risk factors, and opportunities that create measurable business value.
• Create models, simulations, and optimization routines, selecting techniques appropriate to the business problem.
• Monitor and maintain production model performance, including drift detection, retraining, and ongoing tracking and follow-up studies.
• Design and implement data pipelines, automated reporting tools, and dashboards that track key business metrics and provide actionable insights.
• Partner with data engineers to support data quality, accessibility, scalability, and data acquisition strategies.
• Identify opportunities to use AI, machine learning, and automation to replace manual work for revenue-generating teams, and lead delivery of those solutions.
• Partner with actuarial, underwriting, claims, and product teams to translate business problems into technical requirements and data science specifications.
• Advise business leaders and use data and analytics to shape decisions, considering business impact as well as model metrics.
• Communicate insights and recommendations to senior leadership through data storytelling and visualization.
• Provide input into GARS product roadmaps and participate in agile planning and documentation for minimum viable products and long-term roadmaps.
• Ensure models meet insurance regulatory requirements and internal governance standards, including documentation, explainability, bias and fairness testing, and validation.
• Evaluate new data sources, modeling techniques, and technologies, and bring proven approaches into production.
• Drive accountability for value recognition and business results from data science work.
• Mentor junior data scientists and analysts through technical guidance, code and model reviews, and team standards for modeling, coding, and documentation.
• Help build a culture that values analytics, including leading training sessions and advocating for analytics across GARS.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage for full-time employees.
• Wellness plans.
• Parental leave.
• Adoption assistance.
• Tuition reimbursement.
• Paid Time Off for full-time and eligible part-time employees.
• Paid holidays for full-time and eligible part-time employees.
• 401(k) plan with company match for full-time and eligible part-time employees.
• Employee stock purchase plan for full-time and eligible part-time employees.
• Commuter benefits for full-time and eligible part-time employees.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior