Applied Data Scientist / Machine Learning Engineer (Decision Intelligence)

We are looking for a product-minded Applied Data Scientist or Machine Learning Engineer to help build, ship, and scale ML-powered products that directly improve how our customers make decisions, operate their businesses, and serve their own users.

This is not a research-only role, nor is it a service-oriented internal analytics position. We want someone who has taken machine learning from problem definition through experimentation, production deployment, measurement, iteration, and long-term ownership. You understand that great models are not just accurate in notebooks—they are usable, explainable, measurable, scalable, and valuable inside a real product.

Whether your background leans heavily toward Data Engineering/ML Ops or Applied Data Science, you have a strong bias toward shipping and an interest in bridging both worlds to bring AI to life.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

Engineering & AI Enablement

• End-to-End ML Ownership: Drive the development of machine learning capabilities (forecasting, recommendation, ranking, optimization, or decision intelligence) powering customer-facing SaaS products.

• Pipeline & Model Development: Design reliable data and feature pipelines alongside models from discovery through experimentation, validation, deployment, and monitoring.

• Product Integration: Partner with Product Managers and Software Engineers to embed ML directly into product workflows, user experiences, and decision-making tools.

• Pragmatic Prototyping: Move quickly from prototype to production while balancing accuracy, interpretability, latency, maintainability, and business impact.

Ecosystem Ownership & Strategy

• Evaluation & Experimentation: Define offline and online evaluation strategies, including model quality, drift, and reliability. Design A/B tests and causal measurement frameworks to prove ML features improve customer outcomes.

• Data Health & Feedback Loops: Collaborate with Data teams to ensure models are supported by high-quality features, while building feedback loops so product experiences improve over time.

• Platform & MLOps Support: Help manage and optimize cloud data infrastructure, ensuring trustworthy insights and proactively managing data health before it impacts users.

Product & Technical Direction

• Strategic Judgment: Bring strong judgment around when to use traditional ML, statistical modeling, LLMs, heuristics, or simpler product logic. Make practical trade-offs across model complexity and customer impact.

• Roadmap Influence: Clearly communicate what ML can and cannot solve to influence roadmap decisions, helping identify where machine learning can create true product differentiation.

• Mentorship: Guide and mentor other data scientists, ML engineers, analysts, and cross-functional partners in applied ML best practices.

WHO YOU ARE:

• The Proven Builder: You have shipped ML into real products. You are comfortable starting with an ambiguous product problem, figuring out if ML is the right solution, building it, and measuring whether it worked.

• Product-First Architect: You care about product impact as much as model performance. You know that a model with slightly lower accuracy but higher trust, faster inference, better explainability, and stronger user adoption is the better product decision.

• A Multi-Disciplinary Executioner: You understand that a model is only as good as the pipeline feeding it. You prioritize usability, "Time to Insight," and customer trust as much as you do code efficiency.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING:

• Experience: 3+ years (ideally 5+) of professional experience in applied data science, machine learning, or ML engineering, including hands-on experience building and shipping models into production products. Experience with SaaS products is highly valued.

• Technical Core: Strong Python skills and hands-on experience with applied ML libraries and frameworks (e.g., Scikit-Learn, XGBoost, PyTorch, TensorFlow). Solid SQL expertise is required.

• ML & Modeling Depth: Strong understanding of supervised learning, forecasting, ranking, recommendation systems, optimization, or statistical modeling. Experience with real-world, imperfect product datasets is essential.

• Ops & Orchestration: Familiarity with MLOps concepts (model versioning, feature pipelines, orchestration via Airflow/dbt/Dagster, monitoring, drift detection) and modern data platforms (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks).

• Cloud Infrastructure: Hands-on experience operating within cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

• Communication & Collaboration: Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical trade-offs clearly to product, engineering, and non-technical business stakeholders.

BONUS POINTS FOR:

• Experience with decision intelligence, forecasting, customer behavior modeling, workforce/route optimization, or operational intelligence products.

• Experience with LLMs, GenAI, or agentic workflows applied to real product use cases.

• Prior experience acting as a Senior or Lead scientist responsible for guiding technical direction.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT US: • We are laid back but buttoned up. We offer a casual work environment and remote work flexibility and have a passion for developing creative, innovative best in class solutions that directly contribute to the success of our customers • We care deeply and deliver service and solutions that make a real difference in the lives of our clients and their businesses • We openly accept others as they are and build strong partnerships based on trust • Teamwork and collaboration is key to help our colleagues and customers solve their challenges • Our team is energetic, fun, naturally inquisitive and eager to make an impact, we invite you to join us! LOVE WHAT YOU DO, NO MATTER WHERE YOU DO IT: • Join our Remote-First Global Work Community: WorkWave provides an innovative and dynamic remote-first Global Work Community that encourages growth, creativity, and collaboration. No matter what stage of your career or where you live, WorkWave is your place to be part of a global company with a startup feel, where your ideas matter and your growth is a priority. A GLOBAL COMPANY WITH A LOCAL PRESENCE: • We know that there are benefits of being in the office and working from home. WorkWave promotes a healthy work/life balance and provides employees with the flexibility of collaborating in the office or the option to work virtually if desired. Our teams are well versed at working collaboratively in a fully virtual environment. • Our HQ is based at our state of the art home office in the historic Bell Works complex located in Holmdel Township, New Jersey. We keep our offices available to all to use when working remotely isn’t feasible, or to help with cross training, team building and/or brainstorming. • We have employees in over 30 states, 7 countries and many regional offices - each with their own set of perks and opportunities to give back to the local community. • Whether you work remotely or take advantage of one of our offices, you’ll find a community of WorkWavers that value diversity, and care deeply about our products, clients, our communities and each other. RELAX, WE'VE GOT YOU COVERED: • Employees can expect a robust benefits package, including health and dental and 401k with company match AND BEYOND... • Find your perfect work/life balance with our Flexible Time Off policy or generous PTO plan (role dependent) and paid holidays • Up to 4 weeks paid bonding leave • Tuition reimbursement • Robust Employee Assistance Program through TotalCare offering free counseling 24/7/365, plus financial counseling, legal guidance, adoption assistance services and much more! • 24/7 access to virtual medical care with Teladoc • Quarterly awards based on peer nominations • Regional discounts and perks • Opportunities to participate in charitable events and give back to the community GROW WITH US: • We understand the impact of attracting and keeping top talent and reward intellectual curiosity and a thirst for personal and professional growth • Encouraging our employees that already have an intimate knowledge of and passion for our products to apply for other roles within our walls just makes sense! • Our employees have access to extensive video libraries for soft skill and role specific training available 24/7 and live trainings are provided throughout the year JOIN OUR WINNING TEAM! • 10 Time winner of Best Place to Work in New Jersey by NJBiz! • WorkWave has been recognized with multiple awards for its outstanding products, growth and culture, including the Inc. 5000, SaaS Award, IT World Awards, Globe Awards, Silver Stevie Award for Employer of the Year, and Best Place to Work Inc. Magazine • Named one of The Software Report's 3rd annual list of the Top 100 Software Companies of 2022 (worldwide!) We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status: Don't meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At WorkWave, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you feel like you could make a great impact in this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles!