Senior Data Science Manager

Where we work

Udemy is a global company headquartered in San Francisco, with additional U.S. offices in Denver and Austin, and international hubs in Australia, India, Ireland, Mexico, and Türkiye. This is an in-office position, requiring three days a week in the office (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and flexibility on Mondays and Fridays.

About your skills

• Continuous Learning and Growth: Being able to follow up on all the progress in the AI and ML field, translating them into strategic capabilities for you and your teams is critical for this role. Truly understanding what these algorithms are capable of and making sure you set your team for success.

• Leadership: You design and build an environment that balances outcomes and innovation, while keeping a collaborative yet competitive team culture. You lead with humility and clarity. You build an environment where individuals feel supported, heard, and proud of what they build together. You understand how to motivate and empower your team to do their best work.

• Data Driven: You rely on data driven processes to make sure what the team is building is delivering the intended value. Fueled by an iterative process of A/B experiments and learning, you provide a clear process that balances big bets and iterative improvements leading to measurable outcomes.

• Decision Making: You are able to gather and communicate effectively all data, cross functional partner inputs, company direction to facilitate effective brainstorming sessions, help the team to set direction and progress confidently. 

• Effective Communication: You explain the complex domain of ML/AI Algorithms with intuitive and focused simplicity, while clearly communicating limitations and opportunities effectively.

About this role 

As a Data Scientist manager in the Catalog Search team, you will be responsible for managing a team of data scientists building AI/ML driven algorithms for the discovery of learning experiences with a primary focus on search.  You will drive the strategy for the team to explore new strategies to use LLMs, semantic embedding models as well as learning engagement analysis of users (behavioral data) and incorporate these to turn to highly personalized learning opportunities for learners. 

What you’ll be doing 

• Partner with product managers, data scientists, engineers and other stakeholders to build data products and set direction as well as drive the execution.

• Build and maintain a high performance team, by recruiting, hiring and planning career development of a team of data scientists/ML engineers

• Provide hands-on technical guidance and career mentorship for team members

• Maintain high-quality standards, effective communication processes, and best practices in engineering and data science

• Research or prototype solutions and contribute to the codebase as needed

 

What you’ll have

• 8+ years of experience as a software engineer, researcher or data scientist

• 3+ years of management experience of teams building data driven solutions.

• Appetite and relevant background for learning state-of-the-art AI based search solutions

• Strong communication skills both written and verbal 

• Strong coding skills with SQL and 1+ programming language (e.g. Java, Python)

• Familiarity with agile practices (e.g., Scrum)

• Ability to communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders. 

Preferred but not required

• Hands on experience with Enterprise search systems (e.g. Elasticsearch, Solr).

• Experience with big data ecosystems such as Spark, Hadoop and Hive.

• Hands-on experience with training and fine-tuning semantic embeddings and/or LLMs.

application deadline 18 November 2025