Head of Data Science
Job description
WHY SOCURE?
Socure is building the identity trust infrastructure for the digital economy - verifying 100% of good identities in real time and stopping fraud before it starts. The mission is big, the problems are complex, and the impact is felt by businesses, governments, and millions of people every day.
We hire people who want that level of responsibility. People who move fast, think critically, act like owners, and care deeply about solving customer problems with precision. If you want predictability or narrow scope, this won't be your place. If you want to help build the future of identity with a team that holds a high bar for itself - keep reading.
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are seeking an exceptional and forward-thinking leader to drive the next generation of AI-powered Document Verification and Biometrics solutions. This role owns the end-to-end data science strategy and execution across document understanding, facial biometrics, and reusable identity systems, powering seamless and secure identity experiences.
You will lead the evolution from traditional computer vision systems to foundation model-driven, agentic architectures, tackling increasingly sophisticated threats such as deepfakes, presentation attacks, and counterfeit documents. This role demands a leader who operates with strong ownership, moves decisively, and consistently pushes the boundary of what is possible in applied AI.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Own and define the data science vision for Document Verification, Biometrics, and Reusable ID, delivering step-function improvements in accuracy, speed, and user experience.
- Lead and scale a high-performing team of data scientists and applied researchers, setting a high standard for execution, innovation, and accountability.
- Architect and deploy state-of-the-art computer vision and multimodal systems, including vision-language models (VLMs), for document understanding, face matching, liveness detection, and identity verification.
- Drive the development of domain-specific foundation models tailored to identity, documents, and biometrics, leveraging large-scale proprietary datasets.
- Lead the transition to agentic systems, building intelligent agents that can reason over document and biometric signals, automate verification workflows, and adapt dynamically to new fraud patterns.
- Advance fraud and attack detection capabilities, including deepfake detection, presentation attack detection, and counterfeit document detection.
- Design and implement secure and robust systems resilient to emerging threats such as prompt injection and adversarial attacks on multimodal and agent-based systems.
- Leverage vector databases and embedding systems to power similarity search, identity linking, and reusable identity experiences.
- Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Risk teams to deliver scalable, production-grade solutions that meet both business and regulatory requirements.
- Drive rapid experimentation and deployment, balancing innovation with reliability, explainability, and compliance.
- Own customer communication and stakeholder management, serving as a trusted technical leader in engagements with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders; clearly articulate model behavior, agentic systems, performance trade-offs, and roadmap decisions while building strong, long-term relationships.
- Represent Socure externally as a thought leader in biometrics, document AI, and fraud prevention.
WHAT YOU BRING
- Advanced degree (MS/PhD preferred) in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related field.
- 10+ years of experience in data science, machine learning, or applied AI, with a strong track record of building and deploying production systems.
- Deep expertise in computer vision and multimodal AI, including experience with vision-language models (VLMs).
- Proven experience building domain-specific foundation models or large-scale representation learning systems.
- Strong understanding of biometric systems, including face recognition, liveness detection, and anti-spoofing techniques.
- Experience detecting and mitigating deepfakes, presentation attacks, and counterfeit documents.
- Strong understanding of agentic system design, including agent skills, orchestration/harness frameworks, and real-world deployment of autonomous or human-in-the-loop agents.
- Experience with vector databases and embedding-based retrieval systems.
- Strong awareness of emerging attack vectors, including prompt injection, adversarial inputs, and model exploitation techniques.
- Proven ability to lead and scale high-performing teams while delivering under ambiguity and tight timelines.
- Proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch).
- Proven ability to engage with customers and external stakeholders, clearly explaining complex AI systems, trade-offs, and outcomes to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience