Director of Data

Job Summary

The Director of Data is responsible for building and leading IMS's data organization and turning 30 years of proprietary case outcome data into a durable, defensible AI and analytics advantage. This is a founding-level role: it requires someone who can define data architecture, governance, and infrastructure strategy from a relatively early baseline while also being hands-on enough to stand up pipelines, evaluate vendor/acquisition data assets, and support production AI features.

Requirements

• ESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:
  • Data Strategy & Infrastructure
  • Define and execute a data strategy and roadmap covering architecture, quality, governance, and security across all five IMS service lines
  • Build modern data infrastructure — cloud data warehouse/lakehouse, ingestion pipelines, and MLOps foundations — to support AI-powered product capabilities
  • Establish data quality, lineage, and metadata standards across legacy systems inherited from 14+ acquired companies, resolving inconsistencies that block reliable analytics
  • Stand up and lead a data engineering and data science function, including hiring, org design, and mentorship as the team scales AI & Analytics
  • Enablement
  • Partner with the Head of Product Management to convert IMS's 30-year proprietary case outcome data into production AI capabilities: predictive verdict modeling, expert-witness matching, and behavioral/consumer science analysis augmentation
  • Build and operate the feature stores, model deployment pipelines, and monitoring needed to run predictive models reliably in a client-facing litigation context
  • Advisory
  • Advise product and consulting teams on what the data can and cannot credibly support, protecting IMS's reputation for defensible, expert-grade analysis
• Governance, Compliance & Risk
• Own the data governance framework governing privilege, client-conflict walls, retention, and access controls appropriate to a legal services environment
• Ensure data privacy and security practices meet the expectations of law firm and corporate legal clients, including relevant regulatory requirements
• Support international expansion (UK presence) with data residency and GDPR-aligned governance practices

Skills & Experience

• Demonstrated experience building ML/AI infrastructure that supports production predictive models — feature stores, MLOps, and model deployment/monitoring
• Track record integrating disparate data systems following acquisitions, including data migration and reconciliation at scale
• Strong data governance and security background, ideally in a regulated or confidentiality-sensitive industry
• Proven experience building, leading, and developing high-performing data teams as the function scales
• Strong people leadership skills, including coaching, accountability, and cross-functional collaboration
• Experience with legal, financial services, or other regulated professional services data strongly preferred
• Familiarity with litigation case outcome data, expert witness or consulting engagement data structures a meaningful plus

Education & Technical Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required
• 10+ years in data engineering, data architecture, or analytics leadership, including 5+ years in a senior leadership role
• Deep expertise in modern data platforms: cloud data warehousing/lakehouse architecture, ETL/ELT pipelines, and pipeline orchestration
• Experience with unstructured, document-heavy data, not just structured tabular data
• Knowledge of vector databases and retrieval architectures — predictive verdict modeling and expert-matching will likely lean on RAG over case history rather than pure structured MLM
• Master data management experience specifically for entity resolution across acquired companies (e.g., the same expert witness or case entity represented differently across legacy systems)
• Experience with data security certifications or hands-on experience with SOC 2 / ISO 27001 frameworks, given legal clients will demand them contractually
• Experience with synthetic data or privacy-preserving techniques (anonymization, differential privacy) for training models on sensitive case data without exposing privileged information
• Experience with ML observability (drift detection, accuracy monitoring) — critical for a predictive verdict model where silent degradation would be reputationally damaging

Essential Functions

• This role is primarily sedentary and requires remaining in a stationary position for prolonged periods while performing computer-based work, participating in virtual meetings, and communicating through company systems
• Must be able to operate a computer, keyboard, mouse, phone, and other standard office equipment necessary to perform the role
• Requires frequent use of close vision, including reading information on a computer screen, reviewing documents, and working with digital tools for extended periods
• Requires the ability to communicate and exchange accurate information by phone, video conferencing, email, chat, and other virtual communication tools
• May occasionally move, lift, carry, or position office equipment or materials weighing up to 10 pounds
• Occasional travel may be required for business meetings, team events, client meetings, or other company needs

LOCATION

This position is 100% remote and supports east to west coast time zones. Preference is for candidates who are on pacific standard time.