Head of Data Science – Document Verification, Biometrics

Socure

. Own and define the data science vision for Document Verification, Biometrics, and Reusable ID, delivering step-function improvements in accuracy, speed, and user experience.

Posted 5/8/2026full-timeNew York City • New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $250,000 - $300,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

PythonPyTorch

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own and define the data science vision for Document Verification, Biometrics, and Reusable ID, delivering step-function improvements in accuracy, speed, and user experience.
Lead and scale a high-performing team of data scientists and applied researchers, setting a high standard for execution, innovation, and accountability.
Architect and deploy state-of-the-art computer vision and multimodal systems, including vision-language models (VLMs), for document understanding, face matching, liveness detection, and identity verification.
Drive the development of domain-specific foundation models tailored to identity, documents, and biometrics, leveraging large-scale proprietary datasets.
Lead the transition to agentic systems, building intelligent agents that can reason over document and biometric signals, automate verification workflows, and adapt dynamically to new fraud patterns.
Advance fraud and attack detection capabilities, including deepfake detection, presentation attack detection, and counterfeit document detection.
Design and implement secure and robust systems resilient to emerging threats such as prompt injection and adversarial attacks on multimodal and agent-based systems.
Leverage vector databases and embedding systems to power similarity search, identity linking, and reusable identity experiences.
Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Risk teams to deliver scalable, production-grade solutions that meet both business and regulatory requirements.
Drive rapid experimentation and deployment, balancing innovation with reliability, explainability, and compliance.
Own customer communication and stakeholder management, serving as a trusted technical leader in engagements with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders; clearly articulate model behavior, agentic systems, performance trade-offs, and roadmap decisions while building strong, long-term relationships.
Represent Socure externally as a thought leader in biometrics, document AI, and fraud prevention.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Advanced degree (MS/PhD preferred) in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related field.
10+ years of experience in data science, machine learning, or applied AI, with a strong track record of building and deploying production systems.
Deep expertise in computer vision and multimodal AI, including experience with vision-language models (VLMs).
Proven experience building domain-specific foundation models or large-scale representation learning systems.
Strong understanding of biometric systems, including face recognition, liveness detection, and anti-spoofing techniques.
Experience detecting and mitigating deepfakes, presentation attacks, and counterfeit documents.
Strong understanding of agentic system design, including agent skills, orchestration/harness frameworks, and real-world deployment of autonomous or human-in-the-loop agents.
Experience with vector databases and embedding-based retrieval systems.
Strong awareness of emerging attack vectors, including prompt injection, adversarial inputs, and model exploitation techniques.
Proven ability to lead and scale high-performing teams while delivering under ambiguity and tight timelines.
Proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch).
Proven ability to engage with customers and external stakeholders, clearly explaining complex AI systems, trade-offs, and outcomes to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Experience representing organizations in customer-facing discussions, executive briefings, or public speaking engagements is strongly preferred.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive compensation
Equity
Bonus

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

data sciencemachine learningcomputer visionmultimodal AIvision-language modelsbiometric systemsdeepfake detectionpresentation attack detectionvector databasesPython

Soft Skills

leadershipstakeholder managementcustomer communicationinnovationaccountabilityexplainabilityrelationship buildingteam scalingexecution under ambiguitytechnical communication

Certifications

MS in Computer SciencePhD in Computer ScienceMS in Electrical EngineeringPhD in Electrical EngineeringMS in Machine LearningPhD in Machine Learning