Principal Data Scientist (Detection)

Join Cloudflare's Engineering Team as a Principal Data Scientist in the Detection department. You will lead the research, design, and evaluation of detection models that identify automated, fraudulent, and malicious activity across Internet-scale data. You will mentor others, own the detection measurement framework, drive adoption of AI/ML techniques, and shape the long-term detection strategy. Enjoy competitive pay, take-what-you-need vacation, paid maternity and paternity leave, comprehensive employee benefits, a commuter program, and wellbeing support.

You are very comfortable with Python & SQL in production environments

At home in ground truth ambiguity. Building detections when ground truth is scarce is the heart of this job. You make real progress with weak, delayed, or absent labels and you're energized by adversaries that fight back

You don't burn signals. You understand (or are curious to learn) how to act on detections without tipping your hand, knowing that how you deploy and respond can erode your future visibility

Responsibilities

• Lead the research, design, and evaluation of detection models that identify automated, fraudulent, and malicious activity across Internet-scale data.
• Mentor others in uncovering patterns and behaviors that distinguish adversaries from legitimate users, and drive the adoption of promising AI/ML techniques.
• Shape long-term detection strategy, identifying gaps and opportunities that span multiple product areas, and drive cross-functional partnerships with ML Engineers, Data Engineers, and Product.

Requirements

• Fraud and bots at scale. You have experience across fraud, abuse, and/or bot detection on large, high-velocity traffic. You may focus on one, but you transfer instincts between them
• You have at least 8-10 years of experience professionally working in Data Science, ML Engineering, or Software Engineering
• Demonstrated ability to make ambiguous, high-stakes technical decisions with incomplete information
• Strong fundamentals, fluent in data. You have solid applied statistics, machine learning, and AI methodology fundamentals. You choose the right technique for the problem, and are fluent with large-scale data
• Pragmatic about complexity. You know when a simple solution beats a complex one, and you don't chase small gains at disproportionate cost
• Impact-driven and clear. You connect your work to business impact and communicate clearly across technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Disciplined in code. You apply strong programming and engineering best practices in both research and production code

Pay

USD 215,000 - 270,000