Staff Data Scientist, Watchlist

For our client, we are seeking a Staff Data Scientist, Watchlist to join the team of a leader in the Finance & Insurance space. This role will focus on advancing data science and NLP solutions that improve identity matching, entity resolution, and risk detection for financial crime and compliance use cases. You will partner closely with Product and Engineering to build production-grade models and pipelines that support accurate screening, stronger data quality, and scalable decision-making. In this highly technical position, you will also help shape long-term strategy, mentor teammates, and drive continuous improvement across a specialized data science function. Location: Remote - US based candidates only, no visa sponsorship available Compensation: $150,000 – $180,000 annually Responsibilities Improve the quality and freshness of data through next-generation ingestion pipelines Design and execute rigorous data quality analyses to identify anomalies and ensure model training inputs are sound Apply NLP to classify raw data into normalized schemas and extract structured entity attributes Build and enhance NLP systems to consolidate and deduplicate watchlist identities through information extraction and NER Create approaches to manage evolving entity profiles over time Measure and benchmark the quality of entity resolution for continuous improvement Design advanced NLP models for real-time name matching and identity classification from diverse multilingual sources Construct multi-signal risk scoring based on various attributes to calibrate risk effectively Develop customer-facing models to optimize screening thresholds for diverse risk appetites Lead technical initiatives and mentor team members while shaping long-term entity matching strategies Qualifications Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or a related field; or equivalent professional experience 7+ years in data science or machine learning with a focus on NLP, entity resolution, or information extraction Experience in AML, sanctions screening, adverse media, or financial crime detection preferred Hands-on experience building and deploying NLP pipelines for entity extraction and named entity recognition at scale Proficiency in Python and major ML libraries, including PyTorch, spaCy, and HuggingFace Transformers Strong SQL proficiency and experience with large-scale data pipelines and production ML systems Excellent communication skills for conveying technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders Benefits Opportunity to work on high-impact AML compliance solutions for global financial institutions Engagement with cutting-edge NLP and AI technologies in a specialized area of data science Be part of a mission-driven team focused on improving financial security and compliance Culture of technical rigor with opportunities for mentoring and leadership growth Work in a collaborative environment with Product and Engineering teams to innovate and deliver production-grade solutions Our client is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every qualification—your background could be exactly what this team needs.