Director, Data Science

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s largest work marketplace, connecting businesses with highly skilled professionals worldwide. From entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 enterprises, companies trust Upwork’s platform to access expert talent, leverage AI-powered work solutions, and drive meaningful business outcomes.

Upwork’s AI-powered platform has facilitated over $20 billion in economic opportunity for professionals worldwide. With professionals spanning 10,000+ skills, including AI and machine learning, software development, sales and marketing, customer support, finance and accounting, and more, Upwork empowers businesses of all sizes to scale, innovate, and build agile teams.

The Analytics, Data Science, and Economics team is looking for an experienced Director of Data Science to guide strategy and decision-making across the company across a variety of teams and levels. Data Scientists at Upwork work to uncover insights through machine learning techniques and turn them into relevant recommendations, driving decisions for all areas of the organization. This is a unique opportunity to build a function from an early stage.

Your Responsibilities:

• Scale and Lead: Hire, mentor, and scale a world-class data and decisioning science team.
• Communicate Clearly: Present insights with conviction, translating model explanation to key business drivers and results.
• Collaborate & Partner: Work closely with data engineering to enhance and maintain shared feature stores.
• Build Ways of Working: Reinforce rigorous processes for model selection, validation, and retraining across the MDS team.
• Business Acumen & Problem Solving: Guide strategic decisions in partnership with business leaders with a keen eye on business impact.

What it takes to catch our eye:

• A degree in Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science or a related field.
• Leadership experience in Data Science or Econometrics with causal inference / predictive modeling in Python, SQL & Sagemaker etc.
• Demonstrated Impact: Proven success with supply-demand models, econometric modelling, market mix, segmentation, and other optimization tools.
• Structured Thinker: Ability to tackle ambiguity through a hypothesis-driven, data-centric mindset.
• Clarity & Empathy: Keen attention to detail coupled with the ability to articulate ideas succinctly and in an empathetic manner.
• Sound Judgement: Balance of the art and science of Data Science while staying objective and pragmatic.
• Effective Relationships: Build and gain trust with relationships to drive decisions in a consensus manner. 
• Startup Mindset: Own, operate, lead and influence in an agile startup environment and high-performing team.