Senior Data Scientist, Responsible AI | Empower | 100% Remote (US Nationwide)

Empower is hiring a Remote Senior Data Scientist, Responsible AI (Job ID: R.0055709). Requires 6+ years of data science experience, statistical evaluation design, and Python/SQL expertise to validate LLM and GenAI safety. Base salary: $105,700 – $149,275.

About the Company: Empower

Empower is a premier financial services and wealth management institution dedicated to helping millions of individuals achieve financial freedom. Guided by a progressive vision that balances work-life harmony, well-being, and continuous career development, Empower supports an inclusive workforce whose efforts impact communities nationwide.

The company’s advanced AI systems division focuses on building innovative, data-driven platforms for financial planning, risk evaluation, and portfolio analysis. By prioritising absolute computational safety and model observability, Empower’s technology labs build intelligent, cloud-native applications that process financial data securely, maintaining the highest levels of customer trust and market compliance.

About the Role: Senior Data Scientist – Responsible AI (RAI)

Are you a seasoned machine learning expert who specialises in model governance, behavioural testing, and algorithmic fairness? Empower is recruiting a full-time, permanent Senior Data Scientist, Responsible AI (Job ID: R.0055709). This position offers a 100% Remote – US Nationwide structure, allowing you to operate from anywhere within the United States.

⚠️ Crucial Visa Eligibility Notice

Applicants must be explicitly authorised to work for any employer in the United States. Empower is completely unable to sponsor or assume sponsorship of an employment visa at this time, including CPT or OPT work programs.

Operating as a senior individual contributor within Empower’s centralised Responsible AI team, you will embed directly with multiple AI delivery groups as a matrixed data science expert. This role focuses on ensuring that corporate AI and Generative AI (GenAI) models are highly measurable, transparent, safe, and aligned with standard ethical principles. Rather than just training baseline models, you will design the statistical evaluation frameworks, diagnostic benchmark datasets, and adversarial guardrails needed to mitigate hallucination, bias, and operational system risks before models reach production.

Key Responsibilities & Machine Learning Workflows

• GenAI & LLM Behaviour Analysis: Lead the advanced testing, evaluation, and validation of Generative AI applications, focusing on measuring hallucination rates, bias patterns, system robustness, and explainability.

• Repeatable Evaluation Pipelines: Design and build automated testing workflows, curated benchmark datasets, and diagnostic test beds to quantify system boundaries throughout the model lifecycle.

• Cross-Functional Technical Alignment: Partner directly with AI/ML engineers, security architects, and QA analysts to integrate Responsible AI metrics directly into active CI/CD deployment pipelines.

• Algorithmic Risk Consultation: Serve as an expert technical consultant to product owners, legal teams, compliance officers, and risk managers to resolve algorithmic gaps and system performance edge cases.

• Governance Artefact Engineering: Draft comprehensive model cards, evaluation logs, and structural validation documentation to meet corporate transparency mandates and external regulatory reviews.

• Team Mentorship: Provide technical guidance to junior and mid-level data scientists on experimental design, statistical evaluation rigor, and ethical AI development workflows.

Candidate Prerequisites & Preferred Technical Stack

Successful candidates must combine deep analytical backgrounds with an understand of distributed software execution, statistical validation, and risk mitigation methodologies.

Required Experience & Education:

• Academic Foundation: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a highly quantitative field (or equivalent practical industry experience).

• Professional Tenure: 6+ years of continuous experience operating within a professional data science, statistical analysis, or machine learning engineering capacity.

• System Validation Base: Proven track record building or evaluating real-world AI/ML software systems within production or pre-production pipelines.

Core Technical Stack Requirements:

• Programming & Scripting: Expert proficiency using Python for data parsing, validation scripting, and statistical metrics extraction.

• Database Management: Solid capability writing structured SQL queries to build evaluation datasets from relational and NoSQL frameworks.

• Cloud Ecosystems: Hands-on experience working within modern cloud networks, specifically utilizing Amazon Web Services (AWS) machine learning services.

• Analytical Fundamentals: Deep understanding of modern experimental design, hypothesis testing, baseline benchmarking, and statistical error tracking.

Preferred (Set-Apart) Qualifications:

• Direct experience engineering evaluation frameworks for Generative AI architectures or large language models (LLMs).

• Hands-on familiarity with modern explainability tools (e.g., SHAP, LIME), fairness metrics, or custom adversarial robustness test paradigms.

• Familiarity with industry-standard Responsible AI principles, federal governance frameworks, and automated system risk mapping.

Key Job Details & Benefits

• Job ID: R.0055709

• Role Classification: Senior Data Scientist, Responsible AI

• Hiring Entity: Empower

• Workplace Flexibility: 100% Remote (Nationwide within the United States)

• Base Salary Range: $105,700.00 – $149,275.00 (Determined by geography, tenure, and specialized expertise; eligible for corporate bonus programs)

• Employment Framework: Full-Time, Regular position

• Remote Tech Prerequisites: Must provide a reliable, high-speed wired internet connection (Fiber, Cable, or DSL). Empower provides all other workspace computer hardware.

Employee Benefits Package

• Health & Insurance: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and group life insurance plans upon hire.

• Retirement Planning: 401(k) retirement savings plan with up to 6% company matching contributionsalongside financial advisory support.

• Paid Time Off (PTO): Generous vacation allotment, 10 standard company holidays, and 3 floating holidays per calendar year.

• Family Leave: Structured paid parental leave alongside short-term and long-term disability assistance programs.

• Educational Growth: Up to $5,250 annual tuition reimbursement for continuing education.

• Community Integration: 16 hours of paid volunteer time per year with access to active internal Business Resource Groups (BRGs).