Director, Data Science (AI/Advertising)

Location: Bellevue, Washington, USA

Salary: $198,500–$300,000 per year, plus eligible equity and bonus

Company

hirify.global operates an ecommerce platform for pet parents and partners, with advertising as a core growth business.

What you will do

• Own the data science strategy, roadmap, model portfolio, delivery, and scientific quality for onsite and offsite advertising.
• Lead, grow, and mentor a high-performing team of data scientists while setting standards for modeling, experimentation, MLOps, and production delivery.
• Develop supply-side systems for search, relevance, ranking, real-time bidding, bid boosting, premium positioning, and dynamic auctions.
• Develop demand-side systems for budgeting, pacing, budget allocation, keyword and bid recommendations, campaign automation, and ROAS optimization.
• Define and deliver AI and GenAI initiatives including generative creative assistance, LLM-powered recommendations, advertiser copilots, and retrieval-augmented systems.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to ship scalable systems, establish experimentation frameworks, and communicate strategy and tradeoffs to senior leadership.

Requirements

• Advanced degree in a quantitative field such as computer science, machine learning, statistics, operations research, applied mathematics, or data science, or 10+ years of experience building and leading large-scale ML or optimization systems.
• Experience leading data scientists or applied scientists and owning end-to-end production science delivery, ideally in advertising, search, recommendations, personalization, or marketplace systems.
• Deep experience with modern machine learning for ranking and prediction at scale, including deep learning, embeddings, retrieval, multi-objective optimization, and online experimentation.
• Experience with advertising optimization systems involving auctions, real-time bidding, pacing, budget allocation, keyword and bid recommendations, campaign optimization, and ROAS optimization.
• Experience productizing LLMs or generative AI, including RAG, agentic workflows, evaluation harnesses, and quality or safety controls.
• Strong mathematics, statistics, scientific-method, distributed training and serving, communication, and cross-functional leadership skills.

Nice to have

• Experience in digital advertising, retail media, sponsored products, ecommerce, or retail marketplaces.
• Experience with AWS SageMaker or equivalent cloud ML platforms and modern GenAI tooling.
• Track record of hiring and developing senior scientific talent.

Culture & Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and other insurance programs.
• 401(k) with company matching, equity eligibility, and potential annual bonus.
• Paid time off, six paid holidays, and unlimited PTO for exempt salary team members subject to manager approval.
• Parental leave, family services, backup dependent care, flexible spending accounts, telemedicine, wellness programs, and employee assistance.
• Employee discounts, including pet insurance and purchases at hirify.global.com.