Position Overview
Lead Data Scientist, Document Intelligence & AI Agents
Guardian is on a transformation journey to evolve into a modern, forward-thinking insurance company committed to enhancing the wellbeing of its customers and their families. As part of the Data & AI team, this role presents a distinctive opportunity to collaborate with the CDAO and the Head of Data Science, actively contributing to Guardian's ongoing evolution.
Guardian's Data & AI team spearheads a culture of data insights across Guardian, facilitating the successful realization of our strategic initiatives. Our core activities encompass creating business value from our data and analytic products. We are a team of data analysts, data product owners, data scientists and most importantly, data business leaders. Our solutions and actions are critical to Guardian's revenue growth, risk management and customer experience.
Guardian created a Data Science Lab (DSL) to reimagine insurance in light of emerging technology, societal shifts, and evolving consumer needs. The DSL will expedite Guardian's transition to data-driven decision making and insight generation, fostering long-term innovation. The DSL will establish rapid testing capabilities for new technology and the translation of pioneering research into practical, enterprise-wide solutions.
In this role as Lead Data Scientist for the DSL, you'll be entrusted with developing solutions for IDP (Intelligent Document Processing), Intelligent Knowledge Retrieval, AI Automation solutions leveraging Agentic AI and Generative AI, to drive enterprise-wide innovation across various business lines and Guardian products. You'll collaborate with senior executives on high-impact high-visibility projects to deliver AI/ML solutions that will be market-tested and deployed to make a real difference to operational efficiencies and Guardian's overall financial performance. Successful candidates bring expertise in insurance and financial services, a passion for applying cutting-edge ML and AI insights, and the ability to design and implement data science capabilities that foster growth, competitive advantage, and customer satisfaction.
You Will:
Leadership & Strategy
Set the multi-year vision and portfolio roadmap for Document Intelligence, Intelligent Knowledge Retrieval, and AI Bots aligned to Guardian's business strategy and digital transformation.
Be the AI thought leader: identify methods, platforms, and operating models to scale GenAI/ML delivery; articulate build-vs-buy decisions and investment cases.
Define north-star metrics (e.g., straight-through-processing %, cycle-time reduction, cost-to-serve, accuracy/quality, call deflection) and track value realization with executive stakeholders.
Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of data scientists; instill a culture of curiosity, rapid experimentation, and delivery excellence.
Product & Delivery (IDP, Retrieval, AI Bots)
Lead the end-to-end lifecycle-from discovery and pilot to enterprise rollout-of IDP use cases (classification, OCR/layout understanding, entity/table extraction, summarization) across underwriting, claims, and customer service.
Design and ship retrieval-augmented solutions (RAG/grounded generation, vector search, conditional routing) for policy, clinical, and knowledge assets.
Build agentic automations and AI bots for intake, triage, and workflow orchestration; integrate with core systems and human-in-the-loop reviews.
Translate ambiguous business problems into measurable ML/AI products with clear SLAs, success criteria, and operational runbooks.
Research & Innovation
Evaluate and adapt advances in deep learning, LLMs, multimodal document models, and tool-use/agents to high-impact insurance scenarios.
Establish partnerships with universities and industry to co-develop methods; convert research into patentable IP and reusable components.
Proto@type quickly using realistic data and constraints; promote winning ideas to production with rigorous A/B and champion-challenger testing.
Delivery, Responsible AI & Enterprise Integration
Implement multi-layer evaluation (document accuracy, retrieval quality, grounding/hallucination, safety, latency/cost) with automated regression tests.
Optimize compute and inference (GPU/distributed, caching/batching, model routing) for cost and performance.
Embed Responsible AI by design: privacy/PHI/PII safeguards, explainability, bias monitoring, content safety, and model risk documentation; enforce governance for prompts, datasets, and versioning aligned with legal/compliance/audit.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Data, and business leaders to prioritize the backlog, integrate into workflows, and standardize reusable libraries, patterns, and reference architectures across the enterprise.
Lead vendor evaluations and third-party/open-source usage (security, data residency); represent Guardian with executives and at industry forums, communicating progress, risks, and opportunities with clarity.
You are:
You are passionate about cutting-edge technology and keen on applying new AI/ML algorithms and approaches.
You are analytically driven, intellectually curious, and experienced leading the development and implementation of data and analytic solutions to solve challenging business problems.
You enjoy leading a team of data scientist to crack hard to solve problems with AI/ML and seeing it deployed in-market and generating value for Guardian.
You enjoy collaborating with a multi-disciplinary team including data engineers, business analysts, software developers and functional business experts and business leaders.
You have demonstrated track record of managing data science teams and working with business leaders.
You have:
Advanced degree : PhD (6+ years) or Master's (8+ years) in Computer Science, Engineering, Applied Math, or related field-or equivalent experience.
7+ years building and shipping ML/AI solutions, including 3+ years leading data science teams; experience managing a team of practitioners.
Document Intelligence (IDP) expertise : OCR/layout understanding, document classification, entity & table extraction, summarization; comfortable with modern document models and OCR services.
LLMs & GenAI : prompt design and tuning (incl. PEFT/fine-tuning), tool/function calling, safety guardrails; hands-on with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) , vector search, chunking, and grounding over enterprise content.
AI Bots & Agentic Automation : experience building task-oriented agents and bots for intake, triage, and workflow orchestration with human-in-the-loop controls.
Strong Python plus PyTorch and/or TensorFlow; solid algorithms background and proficiency in data/ML engineering patterns (e.g., Spark or Ray) and GPU/distributed computing .
MLOps proficiency : CI/CD for models and prompts, experiment tracking (e.g., MLflow/W&B), model/feature/embedding stores, observability/monitoring, A/B and champion-challenger testing.
Evaluation mindset end-to-end: document accuracy, retrieval quality, grounding/hallucination, safety, latency/cost, tied to business KPIs.
Responsible AI & governance in regulated environments: privacy for PHI/PII, bias/fairness monitoring, explainability, model risk documentation, and versioned data/prompt governance.
Executive communication & influence : clear storytelling, stakeholder management, vendor evaluation, and building investment cases.
Location:
Three days a week at our New York, NY office,
Salary Range:
$148,940.00 - $244,685.00
The salary range reflected above is a good faith estimate of base pay for the primary location of the position. The salary for this position ultimately will be determined based on the education, experience, knowledge, and abilities of the successful candidate. In addition to salary, this role may also be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation.
Our Promise
At Guardian, you'll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals. Through skill-building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards.
Inspire Well-Being
As part of Guardian's Purpose - to inspire well-being - we are committed to offering contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources to our colleagues. Explore our company benefits at www.guardianlife.com/careers/corporate/benefits . Benefits apply to full-time eligible employees. Interns are not eligible for most Company benefits.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.
Accommodations
Guardian is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Guardian also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified job applicants (and employees) to accommodate the individual's known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would create an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact applicant_accommodation@glic.com .
Current Guardian Colleagues: Please apply through the internal Jobs Hub in Workday.
Every day, Guardian helps our 29 million customers realize their dreams through a range of insurance and financial products and services. Our Purpose, to inspire well-being, guides our dedication to the colleagues, consumers, and communities we serve. We know that people count, and we go above and beyond to prepare them for the life they want to live, focusing on their overall well-being - mind, body, and wallet. As one of the largest mutual insurance companies, we put our customers first. Behind every bright future is a GuardianTM. Learn more about Guardian at guardianlife.com .
