Head of Applied Science at Solaria Labs

The typical starting salary range for this role is determined by a number of factors including skills, experience, education, certifications and location. The full salary range for this role reflects the competitive labor market value for all employees in these positions across the national market and provides an opportunity to progress as employees grow and develop within the role. Some roles at Liberty Mutual have a corresponding compensation plan which may include commission and/or bonus earnings at rates that vary based on multiple factors set forth in the compensation plan for the role.

** Location: Boston area preferred however, may consider a well qualified candidate in a remote based capacity  

Who we are:

Solaria Labs is Liberty Mutual’s Enterprise Incubator. We partner with teams from across Liberty to stay on the forefront of disruption, incubating new products, services, and experiences to better serve our customers, agents, and partners today and in the future. Areas of focus include digital ubiquity, climate change, sustainability, new transportation models, insurance value chain disruption, and risk services. Current examples of programs aligned to these focus areas include digital-first insurance platforms for personal and business lines, machine learning powered customer experiences for usage based motor insurance, and new risk services like real-time weather alerting to help our customers stay safe and protect the things they care about most.

Why you may enjoy working at Solaria:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are woven into the fabric of many of our incubation programs, with great potential to create more value for our customers and strengthen our competitive advantage.  As Head of Solaria Applied Science, you will lead the team that applies AI/ML to create disruptive new capabilities for Liberty Mutual.  This will require you to build a deep understanding of the business, create strong partnerships with other teams, understand how AI/ML can be applied to differentiate our products, develop proofs of concept with your team, and guide the organization to prioritize highest value features.  Successful candidates will have a deep understanding of ML techniques and the ability to translate those techniques into business impact.  Examples include identifying property features from Aerial Imagery using computer vision, classifying businesses from documents using natural language processing, and optimizing the performance of our digital insurance offerings. 

Specific responsibilities include: 

• Manage and mentor a multi-disciplinary team of ten or more data scientists, including managers, interns, co-ops, and other staff on rotating assignment
• Partner with teams across Liberty Mutual to identify opportunities to differentiate our products or improve our operations
• Lead the team to design and deploy AI/ML models using generative AI, computer vision, and natural language processing
• Work with product and engineering teams to implement your solutions within internal and customer facing capabilities 
• Ensure the highest standard of technical excellence for all data science efforts in the lab, adopting best practices from other organizations and vetting new technologies or frameworks as appropriate
• Translate and champion ML capabilities for non-technical audiences, both partners and senior executives, to help the organization prioritize
• As part of the Solaria Labs leadership team, help define and execute the Labs strategy to drive new product development and an innovation culture in Liberty
• Coordinate Solaria’s applied science IP strategy, determining what the organization should focus on to protect our business. This also includes educating data scientists on the importance of IP and helping them choose whether to patent or publish their work
• Contribute to the data science professional community at Liberty, helping to guide programs and processes that improve technical excellence, engagement, and diversity

You’re good at and offer:

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, mathematics, or related field plus a minimum of 10 years of proven progressive experience. Master's or Ph.D. level degree is preferred.
• Leadership experience within a corporate, academic, or startup innovation environment is beneficial.
• 7-10 years of management experience, track record of keeping team highly engaged.
• Demonstrated expertise and experience with traditional machine learning methodologies and the latest deep learning architectures, such as transformers.
• Established knowledge and practical experience in areas like computer vision, natural language processing, and generative AI.
• Demonstrated research experience validated by accepted papers at ML conferences, such as ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, and others.
• Possess strong analytical, strategic, project management, decision-making and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment with significant uncertainty
• Possess strong analytical, strategic, project management, decision-making and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment with significant uncertainty.

Technical expertise:

• Proficiency in Python is required, additional knowledge in other programming languages such as SQL, C++ is a plus but not mandatory.
• Experience with the Python data science and machine learning ecosystem, ideally with an understanding of PyTorch.
• Practical experience with cloud platforms like AWS (preferably), Google Cloud, or Azure.
• Familiarity with data pipeline and workflow management tools like Airflow, among others.
• A strong grasp of data structures, algorithms, and software architecture principles such as DRY.
• Desirable if the individual has experience with recommender systems and reinforcement learning.
• Understanding of big data tools such as Hadoop, Spark, etc. is advantageous.

At Liberty Mutual, our purpose is to help people embrace today and confidently pursue tomorrow. That's why we provide an environment focused on openness, inclusion, trust and respect. Here, you'll discover our expansive range of roles, and a workplace where we aim to help turn your passion into a rewarding profession.

Liberty Mutual has proudly been recognized as a "Great Place to Work" by Great Place to Work® US for the past several years. We were also selected as one of the "100 Best Places to Work in IT" on IDG's Insider Pro and Computerworld's 2020 list. For many years running, we have been named by Forbes as one of America's Best Employers for Women and one of America's Best Employers for New Graduates as well as one of America's Best Employers for Diversity. To learn more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion please visit: https://jobs.libertymutualgroup.com/diversity-inclusion

We value your hard work, integrity and commitment to make things better, and we put people first by offering you benefits that support your life and well-being. To learn more about our benefit offerings please visit: https://LMI.co/Benefits

Liberty Mutual is an equal opportunity employer. We will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, disability, veteran's status, pregnancy, genetic information or on any basis prohibited by federal, state or local law.