Director Data Science

About the Team

Our Data Science team is a key player in driving Meesho's growth, building intelligent systems that impact millions of users.

About the Role

We are seeking a Director - Data Science to lead a team of skilled data scientists in developing and deploying machine learning models that drive business outcomes. You will own the data science roadmap for a key business charter, guiding the team through complex challenges to deliver production-grade ML solutions.

Responsibilities

• Lead, grow, and mentor a high-performing team of data scientists.
• Own all data science systems and models in your charter , from strategy to deployment and monitoring.
• Collaborate with senior product, engineering, and business leaders to define and prioritize impactful AI/ML initiatives.
• Represent Data Science in senior leadership discussions and communicate technical strategies, investment decisions, and business impact.
• Drive platformization, system architecture decisions, and ML lifecycle improvements across the charter.
• Ensure model scalability, performance, and cost efficiency, while upholding best practices in experimentation and statistical rigor.
• Guide the team in reading and implementing state-of-the-art research, and facilitate build vs. buy decisions.
• Lead root cause analysis for critical production issues and improve system observability, documentation, and service uptime.

Requirements

• Master's degree (PhD preferred) in Machine Learning, Statistics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field.
• 10+ years of experience in Data Science or Analytics, with at least 6 years of people management experience.
• Strong research background and knowledge of state-of-the-art in AI/ML.
• Proven track record of building and deploying ML models in production at scale.
• Experience managing teams of 20+ data scientists and delivering across cross-functional charters.
• Deep expertise in ML algorithms, experimental design, and performance monitoring.
• Strong coding skills (Python, SQL) and familiarity with Big Data technologies like Spark, Hive, or Redshift.
• Ability to translate business needs into technical solutions, prioritize roadmaps, and estimate effort accurately.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills with a bias for action and clarity in execution.
• Strong experience in building large-scale AI/ML applications for areas such as recommendations systems, ranking, retrieval, search, etc.

Bonus Points For

• Experience leading ML initiatives in B2C or e-commerce settings.
• Contributions to internal tools, open-source libraries, or research publications.
• Strong understanding of ML system performance trade-offs , latency, cost, and throughput.
• Top-tier research publications in the areas of AI and ML, especially in recommendation systems, information retrieval, and knowledge discovery.