Senior Applied AI & Data Scientist

Job description

Feel Good About Doing Good The Knights of Columbus is a tax-exempt Catholic fraternal benefit society that provides financial security to members and their families through our life insurance, long-term care insurance, disability income insurance, investment and annuity products. Charity is at the core of our missions: our profits are donated to help those in need and to support our faith - $1.73B over the past ten years. While we have many employees who are not Catholic, we follow the Church’s teachings in our investment strategies and our employee benefits. As part of our religious mission, we support the pro-life cause by contributing to the March for Life and pregnancy resource centers, we oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia, we are evangelists for the Catholic faith, and we help Christians who are facing religious persecution in the Middle East. We all work together to support our two million members as they volunteer to help others in their parishes and communities around the world. Share Your Talent. Live Your Purpose. We are a growing and purpose-driven community of professionals. Join us to discover how you can meet your goals and ours! #LI-Hybrid Overview The Senior Applied AI & Data Scientist is a senior-level individual contributor who designs, builds, evaluates, and deploys AI-powered solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes across Life Insurance, Investments, Membership, and Charities. This role blends advanced analytics, machine learning, and generative AI (LLMs) with strong product and engineering execution operating within a governed, enterprise-scale data and AI ecosystem. Reporting to the Director of Applied AI & Data Science, this role partners closely with business stakeholders, data analysts, engineers, and Data & AI architects to translate complex questions into explainable and production-ready capabilities. You will build solutions using Snowflake, PostgreSQL, and approved AI platforms including Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), agentic workflows, and decision support analytics with clear responsible AI controls suitable for regulated environments. Core Responsibilities Own end-to-end delivery of AI solutions from problem framing and exploratory analysis through production deployment and measurement. Design and deliver LLM-enabled analytics and “Deep Research” capabilities using RAG over structured and unstructured enterprise data. Build agentic workflows and multi-step orchestration (tool use, function calling, retrieval, and guardrails) to automate business processes. Develop and deploy advanced statistical and machine learning models supporting insurance, actuarial, claims, risk, and investment decision-making. Engineer features and context: build reusable feature pipelines, embeddings, vector search patterns, and semantic/metadata strategies. Define success criteria and evaluation plans: offline tests, human-in-the-loop review, and online measurement (A/B or phased rollout). Productionize and operate models: partner with engineers to implement CI/CD, monitoring, drift detection, prompt/version management, and incident response runbooks. Apply responsible AI practices consistently: bias and fairness assessment, transparency, documentation (model cards), and audit-ready controls. Communicate insights and tradeoffs clearly to executives and technical teams (risk, compliance, security) and influence decisions with data. Contribute to reusable standards and patterns for MLOps/LLMOps across the enterprise (templates, libraries, and governance checklists). Skills Qualifications Required : Strong Python and SQL skills; experience with ML libraries (e.g., scikit-learn, XGBoost, PyTorch/TensorFlow) and data science best practices. Hands-on experience with Snowflake (Snowpark and/or Cortex) and relational databases such as PostgreSQL. Experience with vector search/embeddings and knowledge retrieval patterns; familiarity with vector databases and hybrid search. Experience partnering with engineering on production services (APIs, batch/stream pipelines), monitoring, and CI/CD. Ability to define and run robust evaluation for models/LLMs (quality, safety, performance, cost) and translate into business KPIs. Preferred : Financial services experience (life insurance, annuities, investments preferred) and familiarity with regulated model governance. Experience with legacy-to-cloud data modernization (e.g., IBM DB2 extracts) and integration tools (e.g., Talend) where relevant. Experience with ML lifecycle tooling (e.g., MLflow or equivalent), containerization (Docker), and API frameworks (FastAPI/Flask). Education Required : 6+ years delivering advanced analytics and machine learning solutions, including production deployment. 2+ years delivering GenAI/LLM solutions (RAG, agents, evaluation/guardrails) in an enterprise environment. Compensation The wage range for this role takes into account a broad array of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to: skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. The range below applies as long as the work is performed in Connecticut; the Knights of Columbus reserves the right to adjust the wage range if the position is performed in another location. At the Knights of Columbus, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is $122,000 - $207,500. Authorization to work in the United States is required. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Physical Demands Must be able to remain in a stationary position for a majority of the workday. KofC Cares Our mission is focused on family and faith, and we support our employees in seeking a balanced life. Employee benefits include: Time Away: 13 paid holidays per year in addition to vacation and paid sick leave, and flexible workweek schedules. Professional Development: Certifications, designation, and tuition reimbursement. Retirement Benefits: 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching company contributions, and cash balance retirement plans fully funded by the company. Health and Wellness: Short-term disability and term life insurance fully paid for by the company; Up to 12 weeks of childbirth leave under STD policy. One week of fully paid parental leave for all new parents, including adoptive and foster parents. A variety of health insurance options, including premium-level family coverage and a pre-tax Health Savings Account with employer contributions. The Order's health plans do not cover abortion, sterilization, or contraception, and the Order has helped advocate for other employers who do not want to provide coverage. Long-term disability insurance; Dental insurance; Vision insurance; Health club membership reimbursement; Employee Assistance Program