Vice President, Data Science
Five9
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Hybrid
Location: 🇺🇸 United States
Visit company websiteSalary
💰 $233,000 - $512,000 per year
Job Level
Lead
Tech Stack
CloudOpen SourcePython
About the role
- Lead and grow the in-house data science team.
- Responsible for research, experimentation, data collection and curation, and data analysis that contributes to the performance of Five9’s AI products.
- Evaluate and select AI agent architectural frameworks.
- Evaluate and compare LLM models across commercial and open source choices.
- Model fine-tuning for dedicated tasks, prompt engineering, prompt structure and design, and composite model definitions and evaluations.
- Take complete ownership of the technical and operational direction of the organization.
- Grow the team to meet increased demand for its capabilities.
Requirements
- 12+ years experience in data science or AI applied research, ideally at a best-in-class applied research organization.
- Extensive hands-on experience with LLMs, agentic architectures, retrieval-augmented systems, transformers, and composite model pipelines.
- Strong understanding of commercial and open-source model ecosystems (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral), including evaluation, benchmarking, and tradeoff analysis.
- Proven ability to perform fine-tuning, supervised/unsupervised training, prompt engineering, prompt optimization, and model orchestration for real-world use cases.
- Experience designing evaluation frameworks, experiment methodologies, and robust model comparison workflows.
- Expertise in large-scale data collection, labeling, cleaning, and curation pipelines, preferably with conversational or unstructured text data.
- Familiarity with tools and techniques for data quality assessment, dataset versioning, and data governance.
- Strong proficiency in statistical analysis, A/B experimentation, causal inference, and performance measurement.
- Demonstrated success turning data insights into product improvements that drive measurable business outcomes.
- Ability to work with engineering teams using modern software practices (Python, data platforms, cloud-native environments, APIs, ML Ops tooling).
- Understanding of production ML systems, deployment patterns, monitoring, and safety/guardrail design.
- Ability to collaborate effectively with product managers, engineering leaders, UX, and GTM teams to translate business needs into data science strategies.
- Adept at explaining complex technical concepts to executives, customers, and non-technical stakeholders.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including ability to publish thought leadership (papers, blog posts) and present at conferences.
- Passion for mentoring senior and junior data scientists, fostering technical excellence, and building a culture of experimentation and rigorous thinking.
- Experience engaging directly with customers to understand their needs, gather feedback, and translate insights into product or model improvements.
- Ability to define the data science strategy for AI Agents and customer experience products, aligning with corporate priorities and market opportunities.
- Comfortable being an active contributor—writing code, running experiments, reviewing research—while simultaneously guiding the team’s overall direction.
- Experience hiring, scaling, and structuring high-performing data science teams across multiple geographies.
- Ability to build processes for experimentation, model evaluation, data quality management, and continuous delivery of data science innovation into product.
- Skilled at influencing E-staff and senior leadership, defending technical decisions, shaping product strategy, and representing data science internally and externally.
- Deep understanding of responsible AI principles, privacy considerations, and model safety, including evaluating risks when operating at enterprise scale.
Benefits
- Health, dental, and vision coverage, beginning on the first day of employment. Five9 covers 100% of the employee portion of the health, dental and vision coverage and shares a high portion of the dependent cost. We also offer Short & Long-Term Disability, Basic Life Insurance, and a 401k saving plan with employer matching.
- Access to an innovative mental health support platform that offers personalized care and resources in areas such as: therapy, coaching and self-guided mindfulness exercises for all covered employees and their covered dependents.
- Generous employee stock purchase plan.
- Paid Time Off, Company paid holidays, paid volunteer hours and 12 weeks paid parental leave.
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard skills
data scienceAI applied researchLLMsagentic architecturestransformersfine-tuningprompt engineeringstatistical analysisA/B experimentationmodel orchestration
Soft skills
collaborationcommunicationmentoringinfluencingleadershipproblem-solvingtechnical excellencecustomer engagementstrategic thinkingfostering experimentation