Head Data Science & AI (Director)

Job Description

Job Description

About the Role :

CloudZero is pioneering the Cloud Cost Intelligence category, building the world's first Cloud Economics Operating System. We're transforming how cloud-driven companies connect engineering decisions to business outcomes in real-time.

This is a strategic scale-up role. You'll take our AI research and experimentation to the next level, transforming early prototypes into production systems that define the market. We've built a strong foundation with experiments in time series anomaly detection, GenAI applications, and cost attribution - now we need a hands-on leader to evolve these early innovations into customer-facing products.

You'll tackle genuinely hard problems that will define the future of FinOps :

Real-time Unit Economics : Calculate per-unit costs across millions of transactions with dynamic efficiency management.

Predictive Cost Intelligence : Predict and prevent cost efficiency breaches before they impact business.

Multi-Cloud Attribution : Accurately attribute cloud spend across complex systems using probabilistic modeling.

Autonomous Optimization : Build AI agents that make safe infrastructure changes within business constraints.

Responsibilities :

Technical Leadership & Hands-On Development

Lead by example : spend 60-70% of your time building, architecting, and solving technical problems.

Prototype novel ML / AI research ideas, and help translate them into production-ready systems that handle enterprise scale.

Build AI-powered features (in partnership with product / engineering teams) for cost optimization, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics.

Establish technical standards and development processes for AI / ML systems.

People Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration

Hire and develop a small team of AI / ML specialists

Provide hands-on coaching and technical guidance to team members

Foster a culture of innovation, continuous learning, and customer focus

Lead by example in technical decision-making and problem-solving approach

Partner closely with engineering teams to embed AI throughout the platform

Translate complex AI concepts into business value for executives and customers

Drive AI strategy alignment with company vision and product roadmap

Represent CloudZero's AI capabilities in customer conversations and industry events

Qualifications :

8+ years in Data Science or ML Engineering at high-growth SaaS companies, building and deploying impactful production systems.

Holds a degree in Computer Science, Statistics, or a related technical field.

Hands-on technical leader with experience mentoring, coaching, and hiring data and ML talent.

Fluent across the modern data science stack — data pipelines, modeling, deployment, and monitoring.

Proven experience with time series modeling, forecasting, and anomaly detection systems.

Skilled in Python and comfortable with cloud ML tools like SageMaker, Bedrock, and related infrastructure.

Experience integrating GenAI / LLM systems into production use cases, with a realistic understanding of their strengths and challenges.

Excellent communicator — able to explain technical concepts clearly to non-technical and executive stakeholders.

Pragmatic and impact-driven — prioritizes simplicity, customer value, and speed over complexity.

Stays current with research but thrives in environments where innovation translates quickly into customer outcomes.

Please note : CloudZero is unable to sponsor employment visas. Candidates must have permanent authorization to work in the United States without the need for current or future sponsorship.

Compensation Range : $180K - $250K