VP, Data Science

Company Description

Fortegra Corporation, an insurance services company, provides insurance-related products and distribution and administration services in the United States. The company was formerly known as Life of the South Corporation and changed its name to Fortegra Corporation in 2008. Fortegra Corporation was incorporated in 1981 and is based in Jacksonville, Florida.

Job Description

We are looking for a VP, Data Science to join our technology organization and will be reporting to the CTO. This hands-on position will build the department and lead the organization in the development of critical insight and the deployment of ML enabled workflows. You will coach and grow your team to serve the entire global organization. You will identify opportunities to apply data science capabilities to legacy workflows. You will work with the underwriting, claims, and actuarial teams to find commercial value using data science. You will work closely with the data engineering team to design and develop data platforms to serve the organization. This is a collaborative position that will interact directly with functional and business leaders to help develop requirements and deploy new capabilities. 

• Independently lead and contribute to data analysis and modeling projects from project design, business review meetings with stakeholders, and deriving requirements

• Recruit, Lead, and mentor a high performing data science team
• Be the trusted expert charged with developing our data science roadmap for all business functions
• Deep expertise in statistical modeling, time series analysis, and machine learning techniques including proficient knowledge methods like k-Nearest Neighbors, Naive Bayes, SVM, Decision Forests, Regularization Regressions
• Experience developing algorithms and products with Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Image/Voice Recognition, Unsupervised Process and Pattern Mining using popular ML frameworks

• Substantial programming experience with Python, SQL, and Spark. Experience with data wrangling, data matching, and ETL techniques while programming in several languages to extract and transform data from a variety of data sources (Oracle, SQL, Hadoop)

• Comfort manipulating and analyzing sophisticated, high-volume, high-dimensionality data from varying sources, including both structured and unstructured data

• Use appropriate tools to document all code, processes, and procedures
• Strong customer focus, ownership, urgency and drive
• Effective analytical, troubleshooting and problem-solving skills
• Be a critical stakeholder in architectural decisions and evaluating systems implementations

Qualifications

·        B.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, or other quantitative fields

·        Must have a minimum of 8+ years of applied technical experience in data science, with           at least 4 years of management experience: Expert in Python, SQL, and Spark 

·        Demonstrated experience growing high performing teams

·        Deep technical background in data science, including but not limited to statistical                     analyses, time series analysis, and machine learning

·        Experience developing and deploying models into production

·        Experience with commonly used open source data science packages and their                       commercially supported versions

·        Some experience with CI/CD pipelines using Git and Jenkins

·        Familiarity with agile development processes.

·        Working knowledge of GIT

·        Working knowledge of JIRA

·        Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Additional Information

Full benefit package including medical, dental, life, company paid short/long term disability, 401(k), tuition assistance and more.

Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/Fortegra