Director, Data Science

Who We Are

• DuckDuckGo is an online protection company and remote-first team of 300+ people.
• Founded in 2008, profitable since 2014, with annual revenue exceeding $100m USD.
• Millions use DuckDuckGo's browser (Mac, Windows, iOS, Android), search engine, and subscription.
• Offers private, useful, optional AI including Duck.ai for private chat with ChatGPT, Claude, and other AIs.
• Culture emphasizes trust, inclusivity, empowered project management with full ownership from scoping to postmortem.

Your Team and Role

• Part of the Data Science Functional Team.
• Drive product and business impact by developing data scientists, setting clear expectations, providing hands-on mentorship, and removing blockers.
• Guide and advise multiple data science projects to ensure on-track progress and timely delivery with maximum impact.
• Projects involve statistical modeling, experiment design, classifier implementation across search engine, instant answers, AI, revenue optimization.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to validate direction through data.
• Build trust in organizational tactics and strategy by consulting on experiments.
• Become an expert in core metrics like searches, installs, revenue.
• Drive improvement of the data pipeline.
• Develop creative strategies to surface actionable insights under strong privacy policies in an evidence-first culture.

About You

• 10+ years experience in data science or ML engineering; 4+ years leading teams.
• Proven track record setting multi-team roadmaps and adapting swiftly as priorities shift.
• Experience driving organizational culture toward data-driven decision-making.
• Ability to translate technical tradeoffs and risks clearly for executives and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Enjoy coaching experienced data scientists; provide direct actionable feedback; build high-performing teams.
• Expert-level deployment and iteration of ML and NLP solutions in production; deep knowledge of tool selection especially under constrained environments requiring fast responses and strict privacy standards.
• Write production-grade code in Python or comparable high-level language; stay close to technical work when needed.
• Advanced SQL and query optimization skills; familiarity with columnar databases like BigQuery, Clickhouse, Redshift, or Druid.
• Strong LLM/AI experience including fine-tuning,...