Staff Data Scientist

About Andela:

At Andela, we know brilliance is evenly distributed around the world, but opportunity is not. For over 10 years, Andela has connected its customers with top global, remote technical talent from over 135 countries with the majority residing in emerging markets like Africa and Latin America.

As one of the world’s largest talent marketplaces, Andela gives companies greater flexibility to quickly deploy qualified technologists. With talent highly skilled in advanced technologies to support Application Development, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud & DevOps, Data Engineering, and much more, customers experience 33% faster project delivery. The company’s exclusive AI-powered platform, Andela Talent Cloud, is the industry’s only unified platform managing the complete global talent lifecycle and enables customers to fill individual roles or engage fully managed teams up to 66% faster.

Andela is on the precipice of two breakout industry transformations: one in staffing/hiring and the other in software development, both accelerated by generative AI.

Join us and change the world.

We are looking for a Staff Data Scientist to join our team building a world-class technology marketplace platform for engineering talent and delivering cutting-edge Generative AI (GenAI) managed solutions for enterprise clients. In this role, you will leverage deep statistical expertise, advanced modeling techniques, and rigorous research methods to design, evaluate, and optimize data-driven products. Your work will directly shape our talent-matching algorithms, enhance client–talent engagement strategies, and drive innovation in AI-powered services that fuel our strategic growth.

Exceptional Leadership:

As an Andelan, you don’t need to be a people manager to be a leader, and you’ll serve as a role model for the rest of the company. Think about the feedback your peers typically give you – if it usually sounds like the below, we want to hear from you. 

• Low ego, low drama, servant leader: You share credit, take blame. You like being wrong because it means someone else had an even better idea. 

• One team mentality: You break silos across teams. You put the company and mission first above yourself and team alone. 

• Great listener, hungry for feedback: You’re always seeking to improve – our product, our business, yourself. You solicit diverse opinions and deeply listen. 

• Owner, not renter: You see a problem, you fix it or find someone who will. The buck stops with you.

• Player-coach: You roll up your sleeves and get scrappy. You do this by proactively collaborating with your team while actively engaging in important details. 

• Business problem solver: You’re not just a functional expert; you consistently get praise for approaching your function through the lens of solving business problems. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, development, and continuous improvement of advanced statistical, machine learning, and generative AI models, with a primary focus on talent marketplace matching, recommendation systems, and predictive analytics.

• Conduct research-driven initiatives to improve the scalability, interpretability, and real-world performance of AI models, ensuring measurable impact for enterprise customers.

• Build robust experimentation frameworks—including A/B testing, causal inference, and advanced statistical validation—to guide algorithmic and product decisions.

• Partner with engineering teams to ensure that models are deployed efficiently, monitored effectively, and optimized for performance in production environments.

• Collaborate closely with product managers, AI specialists, and client-facing teams to align data science initiatives with customer needs and business goals.

• Stay ahead of emerging trends in AI, GenAI, and marketplace technologies, proactively recommending innovations and best practices.

• Contribute thought leadership by publishing research, presenting at conferences, and mentoring peers to foster a culture of technical excellence.
   

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in a STEM discipline (Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering) with a significant research component.

• Strong expertise in mathematical modeling, optimization algorithms, and statistical analysis.

• Proven track record in designing, validating, and deploying machine learning and Generative AI models, ideally within marketplace or recomme