Principal Data Scientist

About the Role:

We are looking for a Principal Data Scientist to help us accomplish our mission to become the premier digital safety organization of the world. You will play a pivotal role in developing, validating, and optimizing advanced ML and LLM models to support marketing, product, and digital safety. You will bridge the gap between complex business challenges in digital security, data, and cutting-edge data science and machine learning capabilities. This role demands a deep understanding of both machine learning and business principles, coupled with the ability to guide cross-functional teams (data scientists, data engineers, product managers) in delivering impactful and privacy-preserving AI products, data, and features. You will play a key role in shaping Aura's data and AI strategy, ensuring our solutions are innovative, scalable, stable, secure, and deliver tangible value to our customers.

Day to Day:

• Develop and validate impactful AI for well-being and security, ensuring our tools are scientifically sound and clinically relevant. We prioritize scientific integrity and real-world positive outcomes.
• Act as a thought leader on our data science team, bridging AI with practical application by working closely with engineering, product, and clinical experts. A core focus is integrating models seamlessly and securely, recognizing the sensitivity of digital protection and mental health
• Serve as the primary analyst for scientific outputs, translating complex data into clear, actionable insights.
• Build and refine robust, transparent, and reproducible research pipelines. This ensures consistency and upholds the security and privacy essential when dealing with child and adult mental health information.
• Collaborate across teams to design and execute data analyses, answering key questions in clinical and product-related mental health research.
• Provide biostatistical expertise and data analysis for peer-reviewed publications, advancing the secure and effective use of technology in mental health.

What you bring to the table:

• PhD in Computer Science, Health Sciences, or Statistical Sciences preferred, Master’s degree required.
• 8+ years of experience working with data at scale, performing cleaning, feature extraction and model training, testing and validation. Demonstrable knowledge of generative AI, prompt engineering and output validation / sanitization techniques. 
• Experience working directly with product teams, especially in clinical or youth-focused healthcare environments.
• Foundational expertise in biostatistics, including study design, hypothesis testing, and interpreting clinical data.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze and validate complex datasets with scientific rigor.
• Proven experience building research pipelines that prioritize transparency and reproducibility.

It would be great if you also had:

• Experience working with large and complex datasets, including digital security, identity, mental health or behavioral data related to adolescents.
• A track record of authoring peer-reviewed publications and contributing to scientific literature.
• Familiarity with data warehouses (e.g. Databricks), proficiency in python / pySpark including common machine learning toolkits, experience with model lifecycle tools (e.g MLflow) and  statistical tools (e.g., R, SAS).

Aura is committed to offering a generous package to support our employees in all aspects of their life in and out of work. Our packages offer competitive pay, generous health and wellness benefits, retirement savings plans, parental leave and much more! Pay range for this position is $180,000-230,000, but may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience and location.

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