Lead - Data Science

About Anaira AI Anaira AI is building next-generation AI-powered products for the insurance industry. We combine modern software architecture, data science, machine learning, and AI agents to help insurers make better decisions across underwriting, claims, fraud detection, risk assessment, and operations. Anaira is an insurtech startup on a mission to transform one of the world’s most complex industries using advanced AI, ML, and deep domain expertise. Founded by seasoned leaders from the technology and insurance sectors and backed by marquee investors, Anaira is building smarter, faster, and more transparent solutions for insurers. As part of the founding tech team, you will have the opportunity to shape the foundations of our platform and company from the ground up. You will work with a highly motivated team solving real-world insurance challenges, designing scalable systems, and creating meaningful impact in a space ready for innovation.

Role Description We are looking for a

Senior Lead – Data Science, Risk, Fraud & AI to lead the design, development, and deployment of advanced data science, machine learning, and AI-led decisioning solutions for the insurance and BFSI ecosystem. This role is ideal for a senior data science leader who combines strong machine learning and analytics capabilities with deep BFSI, insurance, fraud, risk, underwriting, or decisioning experience. The role will work closely with product, engineering, customers, and business stakeholders to build AI-powered solutions for underwriting, claims, fraud detection, risk assessment, and operational automation. The Senior Lead will own the end-to-end lifecycle of data science initiatives, from problem definition and data exploration to model development, validation, deployment, monitoring, governance, and business adoption. The role also includes leading and mentoring data scientists and machine learning engineers, contributing to Anaira’s AI and data science strategy, and helping build scalable AI systems that operate reliably in production.

Key Responsibilities Data Science & Machine Learning

• Lead the end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning and advanced analytics initiatives.
• Design, develop, validate, and deploy predictive and prescriptive models for BFSI and insurance use cases.
• Build scalable data science solutions using structured and unstructured data.
• Drive model monitoring, performance tracking, explainability, and governance practices.
• Establish best practices for experimentation, feature engineering, model evaluation, and MLOps.

Fraud & Risk Analytics

• Design and enhance fraud detection and fraud prevention models.
• Build risk scoring, propensity, anomaly detection, and behavioral analytics models.
• Develop decisioning frameworks for underwriting, claims, collections, and customer risk assessment.
• Partner with business stakeholders to translate fraud and risk strategies into analytical solutions.
• Continuously improve model effectiveness while balancing customer experience and operational efficiency.

AI & Agentic Decisioning

• Explore and implement AI agent architectures that assist or automate business decision-making.
• Build agentic workflows combining LLMs, predictive models, rules engines, and enterprise data.
• Develop AI-driven copilots and decision-support systems for operational teams.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and identify practical applications within insurance and BFSI workflows.
• Drive responsible AI adoption with a focus on explainability, governance, and compliance.

Leadership & Stakeholder Management

• Lead and mentor a team of data scientists and machine learning engineers.
• Work closely with product and engineering teams to operationalize analytical solutions.
• Engage directly with customers and business leaders to understand challenges and define analytical roadmaps.
• Contribute to Anaira’s AI and data science strategy.
• Build a culture of innovation, experimentation, ownership, and continuous learning.

Required Qualifications

• 4-8 years of experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, Advanced Analytics, or related fields.
• Strong experience in Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, FinTech, InsurTech, or related domains.
• Proven experience building and deploying machine learning models in production environments.
• Demonstrated experience in fraud analytics, fraud detection, risk modeling, underwriting analytics, claims analytics, or related areas.
• Strong understanding of supervised and unsupervised learning techniques.
• Hands-on expertise in Python and common data science libraries such as Pandas, Scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar tools.
• Experience working with SQL and large-scale data platforms.
• Familiarity with cloud environments and modern MLOps practices.
• Strong communication, customer-facing, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience leading data science initiatives and mentoring team members.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working within the insurance industry.
• Experience with GenAI, LLMs, RAG architectures, AI agents, and agentic workflows.
• Familiarity with decision engines, rules engines, and enterprise workflow platforms.
• Exposure to model governance, explainability, and regulatory requirements within BFSI.
• Experience building AI-powered decision support systems or operational copilots.

What Success Looks Like

• Delivery of measurable business impact through fraud, risk, underwriting, and decisioning models.
• Successful deployment of AI-powered decision support systems and agentic solutions.
• Strong model governance, scalability, reliability, and production adoption.
• High-quality collaboration across product, engineering, customer, and business teams.
• Development of a high-performing data science function capable of supporting rapid growth and innovation.

Why Join Anaira AI At Anaira, your work will directly shape how insurers use AI to make better, faster, and more transparent decisions. You will work on complex, high-impact problems across underwriting, claims, fraud, risk, and operations while helping build the foundation of an AI-first insurance technology company.If you enjoy solving real-world problems, building for scale, and working at the intersection of AI, data science, and insurance, Anaira AI is where your work will truly matter.