Director, Data Science

The Role at a Glance

Lincoln Financial is a Fortune 500 company and one of the nation’s leading group benefits carriers. Our Advanced Analytics team sits at the heart of how the Group Protection business turns data into a competitive advantage. We partner deeply across functions — particularly Claims, Finance, and IT — on the strategic, multi-month and multi-year initiatives that move the business, spanning our disability and absence product suites and increasingly group life and supplemental health.

As Director, Data Science, you will lead a small, experienced team of data scientists and analytics professionals whose work bridges the most technical disciplines and the realities of running the business. This is not a back-office IT function: our team understands how a claim is actually managed, and we build solutions — from advanced AI to deep data and analytics engineering — that are technically rigorous and grounded in real operational and financial value. Our motto says it best: turning data into insights… and insights into value.

This is a builder’s leadership role. You will develop and amplify the talent on the team, raise the bar on how we deliver, and put in place the practices and governance framework that lets us scale our impact. If you are excited to shape a high-potential team with a strong track record and a clear runway for growth, we want to hear from you.

What you'll be doing

•Lead, coach, and grow the team — Manage a small team of data scientists across different levels and career stages, developing them technically and professionally and unlocking the full potential of an already strong group.
•Champion the work to every audience — Serve as the bridge between deeply technical disciplines and business stakeholders, translating complex analytical work into clear narratives and confident decisions for non-technical partners across Claims, Finance, and beyond.
•Drive strategic analytics initiatives — Own delivery of high-priority, multi-month and multi-year programs across Group Protection, with a primary focus on Claims and selective expansion into Underwriting, Finance, and Distribution as opportunities arise.
•Build the practices and governance framework — Translate enterprise standards into a repeatable framework for documentation, validation, and governance — removing a key bottleneck so the team can create value consistently and at scale.
•Mature the MLOps practice — Establish and evolve a robust MLOps framework spanning model development, deployment, monitoring, and iteration, so the team ships reliable solutions faster.
•Build for reuse and scale — Develop reusable data assets, code and feature libraries, pipelines, and methodological frameworks that compound the team’s velocity — turning one-off solutions into durable building blocks that accelerate future work and unlock higher ROI.
•Infuse data science across our work — Work hands-on alongside the team to inject targeted data science techniques — including data engineering, pipelines, and solution architecture that moves data between front-end user solutions and back-end data tables — into analytics and AI initiatives, in close partnership with other technical and business groups.
•Innovate continuously — Explore emerging modeling techniques, generative AI, new data sources, and tooling, bringing best practices that continually evolve how the team works.

What we’re looking for

Requirements
•8+ years of progressive experience in analytics, spanning areas such as data science, data engineering, analytics engineering, and data storytelling.
•Demonstrated experience leading, mentoring, and developing analytical talent.
•Strong proficiency in SQL and Python.
•Hands-on command of the end-to-end modeling lifecycle, from requirements gathering through deployment, monitoring, and validation.
•Experience establishing or operating MLOps practices, model governance, and data science standards.
•Exceptional communication and organizational skills — able to translate complex technical work for non-technical audiences, manage competing priorities, and keep sta