Senior Data Scientist

Be Here. Be Great. Working for a leader in the insurance industry means opportunity for you.

About GAIG

• American Insurance Group's member companies are subsidiaries of American Financial Group.
• We combine a "small company" culture where your ideas will be heard with "big company" expertise to help you succeed.
• With over 30 specialty and property and casualty operations, there are always opportunities here to learn and grow.
• At Great American, we value and recognize the benefits derived when people with different backgrounds and experiences work together to achieve business results.
• Our goal is to create a workplace where all employees feel included, empowered, and enabled to perform at their best.
• American Risk Solutions (GARS) is a growing wholesale excess & surplus (E&S) insurance business focused on complex and specialized commercial risks.
• As a dynamic and expanding business, GARS combines the entrepreneurial spirit of a growth-oriented organization with the stability and resources of Great American Insurance Group.
• American’s culture is built on connection, shared learning, and strong relationships.

Responsibilities

• Job Functions and Responsibilities Modeling and Analytics Leadership Applies advanced subject matter expertise to shape data science strategy and business potential for the organization.
• Works independently with limited supervision.
• Leads small to moderately complex projects from design through deployment and serves as a technical mentor to junior team members.
• Has a high level of understanding of the organization’s business and technology operations and a strong working knowledge of department policies and procedures.
• Leads the design, development, validation, and deployment of predictive models for underwriting, pricing, claims, and customer retention, from initial study design through production rollout.
• Analyzes large, complex, high-dimensional datasets, using structured and unstructured sources, to identify trends, patterns, risk factors, and opportunities that drive measurable business value.
• Creates models, simulations, and optimization routines, and selects the right technique for the business problem rather than the most complex one.
• Monitors and maintains the performance of models in production, including drift detection, retraining, and ongoing tracking and follow-up studies.
• Data, Automation, and Engineering Designs and implements data pipelines, automated reporting tools, and dashboards that track key business metrics and provide actionable insights.
• Partners with data engineers to ensure data quality, accessibility, and scalability, and defines data acquisition strategies that enable the capture and sharing of data and analytics across the organization.
• Identifies opportunities to apply artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation to replace manual work for revenue-generating teams, and leads the delivery of those solutions.
• Business Partnership and Influence Partners with actuarial, underwriting, claims, and product teams to translate business problems and opportunities into technical requirements and data science specifications.
• Acts as a trusted advisor to business leaders, using data and analytics to shape decisions, and weighs the big picture and business impact in addition to model metrics.
• Communicates insights and recommendations to senior leadership through clear data storytelling and visualization.
• Provides input into GARS product roadmaps and takes an active role in agile planning and documentation for minimum viable products and long-term roadmaps.
• Governance and Innovation Ensures models meet insurance regulatory requirements and internal model governance standards, including documentation, explainability, bias and fairness testing, and validation.
• Drives innovation by evaluating new data sources, modeling techniques, and technologies, and brings proven approaches into production.
• Drives accountability for value recognition and business results from data science work.
• Mentorship and Culture Mentors and provides technical guidance to junior data scientists and analysts, including code and model reviews, and helps set team standards for modeling, coding, and documentation.
• Helps build a culture that values analytics as a business competency, including leading training sessions and advocating for the benefits of analytics across GARS.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• This position is not eligible for employment visa sponsorship.
• Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future sponsorship.
• Expert in Python and its core machine learning libraries (e.g., scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM).
• Advanced proficiency creating, retrieving, and optimizing data via SQL in Snowflake or a comparable SQL database.
• Experience with a major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and data pipeline tools (e.g., Airflow, dbt).
• Strong proficiency in data visualization and dashboard development using Tableau or Power BI, and the ability to present complex problems and solutions to senior leaders.
• Master’s degree in data science, statistics, computer science, actuarial science, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent work experience, is required.
• Generally, a minimum of 6 years of experience exploring and manipulating large datasets, leveraging structured and unstructured data sources, and applying predictive modeling, including taking models from concept to production.
• Proven experience in techniques for optimizing models, machine learning, and analytical programming.

Preferred

• Experience with R is a plus.
• Experience with geospatial data, telematics, or catastrophe modeling.
• PhD preferred.

Pay

• Compensation varies by role, level, and location and is influenced by skills, experience, and business needs.
• Your recruiter will provide details about benefits and specific compensation ranges during the hiring process.

Benefits

• Great American Risk Solutions Benefits: We offer competitive benefits packages for full-time and part-time employees*.
• Full-time employees have access to medical, dental, and vision coverage, wellness plans, parental leave, adoption assistance, and tuition reimbursement.
• Full-time and eligible part-time employees also enjoy Paid Time Off and paid holidays, a 401(k) plan with company match, an employee stock purchase plan, and commuter benefits.

To support this, employees in this role are expected to be on‑site four days a week, with the flexibility to work one day remotely. Core in‑office days are Tuesday–Thursday, with the fourth day determined by business needs.

Learn more at http://www.gaig.com/careers . *Excludes seasonal employees and interns.