More than 35 years ago, SelectQuote was founded on one core promise: to help our customers protect the people they value most. We pioneered the way consumers shopped for term life insurance, and now, we also help people find home insurance, auto insurance, senior health insurance and more. Our quick and easy process saves consumers both time and money, and today, more than 2 million families trust us to help them with their insurance needs.
 
But what truly sets us apart is our people, and the opportunities to grow your career with SelectQuote are unmatched.

We are seeking a highly skilled Director of AI & Data Science to lead our growing team. In this role you will shape and execute the enterprise data science strategy - advancing both traditional machine learning and emerging techniques such as reinforcement learning to unlock new sources of value. You will guide the optimization of existing models through modern MLOps practices ensuring reliability scalability and continuous improvement. The ideal candidate blends deep technical fluency with strategic vision applying advanced analytics Generative AI (GenAI) and natural language understanding to drive measurable business impact through improved model performance decision intelligence and customer engagement.

Supervisory Responsibilities: 

• This position has direct supervisory responsibilities. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Partner to execute the enterprise AI strategy ensuring alignment with business priorities and measurable impact across divisions and functions.
• Lead mentor and scale a team of data scientists providing guidance and support to drive technical excellence and professional development.
• Oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of AI/ML solutions from research and design to deployment and monitoring including GenAI- and NLP-powered capabilities such as text summarization sentiment detection or conversational insights.
• Partner and guide recommendations to optimize and expand existing predictive models to ensure scalability reliability and measurable business impact.
• Drive the adoption of MLOps best practices for the scalable deployment of all models including LLMs and other generative models.
• Advance the use of reinforcement and adaptive learning to enhance automation decision-making and continuous model improvement.
• Collaborate with data enablement teams to govern unstructured data assets through well-defined metadata standards taxonomies and ontologies that improve enterprise knowledge discoverability and quality.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for AI/ML and GenAI solutioning providing technical leadership and influencing best practices across teams.

Skills/Abilities: 

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear actionable insights for non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong proficiency in statistical analysis machine learning algorithms predictive modeling and data mining techniques.
• Experience with NLP techniques (e.g. text classification topic modeling sentiment analysis) and their application to real-world business problems.
• Deep expertise in the AWS AI ecosystem with practical experience designing and deploying solutions using SageMaker Bedrock Transcribe and other core AI/ML infrastructure services.
• Proficiency in Python R and SQL with hands-on experience using modern NLP frameworks (e.g. Hugging Face, spaCy, LangChain) and applying MLOps tools for scalable model deployment and monitoring.
• Deep understanding of modern AI including Large Language Models (LLMs) NLP fine-tuning retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques foundation models and agentic frameworks.
• Deep understanding of modern and traditional ML techniques including reinforcement and adaptive learning with the ability to guide model optimization and continuous improvement.
• Strong problem-solving skills with a demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into data-driven solutions and lead complex projects to completion.

Education and Experience:  

• An advanced degree (MS/PhD) in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics or a related field is preferred; a Bachelor's degree with extensive relevant experience will be considered.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in data science with a record of applying analytics and AI to enterprise-scale business challenges.
• 3+ years of people management and team leadership experience with a focus on mentoring innovation and professional development.
• Proven experience leading AI/ML initiatives from concept through production including projects that integrate structured and unstructured data for improved customer and operational insights.
• Experience in domains such as contact centers healthcare or prescription fulfillment where voice text or conversational data inform key decisions is highly desirable.

Physical Requirements: 

• Work is performed indoors with potential for exposure to safety and health hazards related to office work. Could periodically travel to other office and operational sites.  The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.
• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.

SelectQuote Core Values: 

Service: We create positive customer experiences. 

Entrepreneurship: We create innovate & take risks. 

Leadership: We build & invest in high-performing teams. 

Empowerment: We embrace a changing environment. 

Courage: We challenge the status quo & drive continuous improvement.

Teamwork: We help support & celebrate each other.

Disclaimer: The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this job. They are not intended to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities duties and skills required.