Senior Data Scientist, Agentic AI (Insurance Underwriting)

Overview

Guardian is on a transformation journey to evolve into a modern, forward-thinking insurance company committed to enhancing the wellbeing of its customers and their families. This role presents a distinctive opportunity to drive real-world impact by applying cutting-edge AI to transform how Guardian does business. 

Guardian’s Data & AI team spearheads a culture of intelligence and automation across the enterprise, creating business value from advanced data and AI solutions. Our team includes data scientists, engineers, analysts, and product leaders working together to deliver AI-driven products that power growth, improve risk management, and elevate customer experience. 

Guardian created the Data Science Lab (DSL) to reimagine insurance in light of emerging technology, evolving consumer needs, and rapid advances in AI. The DSL expedites Guardian’s transition to data-driven decision making and fosters innovation by rapidly testing, scaling, and operationalizing state-of-the-art AI. 

We are seeking a Senior Data Scientist, Agentic AI—an experienced individual contributor with deep expertise in Agentic AI, large language models (LLMs) with a track record of delivering enterprise level AI/ML solutions and products., and natural language processing (NLP). In this role, you will be working in a team led by a Lead Data Scientist to develop and deploy advanced agentic AI and LLM-powered solutions that automate business workflows, enhance decision-making, and deliver measurable business outcomes.  You'll collaborate with cross-functional teams of other Data Science, Data Engineering, Business groups. Successful candidates have strong technical foundation, excel in coding, detail oriented, and have passion for analytical thinking and problem solving.

You Will: 

Key Responsibilities 

• Lead the design and implementation of agentic AI solutions and LLM-powered applications that automate business processes and improve customer and employee experiences.
• Drive the end-to-end model lifecycle: data exploration and preparation, model finetuning, validation, deployment, and monitoring, ensuring quality, security, scalability, and fairness.
• Apply LLMs and generative AI to process and interpret unstructured data (e.g., insurance applications, underwriter’s notes, medical records, customer interactions).
• Develop autonomous agents, multi-step reasoning systems, and advanced NLP pipelines that integrate with Guardian’s platforms.
• Translate research in agentic AI, LLMs, and reinforcement learning into practical, production-ready solutions for underwriting automation, claims automation, customer servicing, and risk assessment.
• Collaborate with data engineers, MLOps/AIOps, and product teams to ensure robust, scalable, and maintainable solutions.
• Contribute to standardization of tools, processes, and best practices.
• Adhere to AI/LLM governance, documentation, testing, and other best practices in partnership with key stakeholders.
• Present results and recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership.
• Stay current on industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in agentic AI, LLMs, and NLP.

You are:

• Passionate about applying advanced AI techniques—especially agentic AI, LLMs, and NLP—to solve real-world business challenges.
• Analytical, intellectually curious, and experienced in leading the development and implementation of data and analytic solutions.
• A hands-on builder who enjoys moving solutions from prototype to deployment and seeing them deliver value in production.
• Comfortable collaborating in cross-functional teams and aligning technical solutions with business goals.
• An effective communicator, able to present complex ideas and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

You have: 

• PhD with 2+ years, Master’s with 4+ years of experience in Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or related field.
• Experience in Insurance Underwriting
• 3+ years of hands-on experience in AI/ML modeling and development, with a primary focus on agentic AI, LLMs, and NLP.
• Background in insurance and underwriting preferred
• Deep expertise in LLMs, generative AI, agentic systems, NLP, and multi-step reasoning architectures (e.g., LangGraph, RAG, agent frameworks).
• Strong programming skills in Python and familiarity with frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face Transformers, and LangChain.
• Demonstrated experience building, fine-tuning, and deploying LLMs and NLP solutions in production environments.
• Working knowledge of classical machine learning techniques (e.g., clustering, regression, XGBoost, Random Forest, decision trees) and their practical applications.
• Experience with data wrangling, distributed computing, and applying parallelism to ML solutions.
• Proven experience in providing technical leadership and mentoring to data scientists and strong project management skills with ability to monitor/track performance for enterprise success 
• Working knowledge of core software engineering concepts (version control with Git/GitHub, testing, logging, CI/CD).
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Experience in insurance, financial services, or related industries is a plus.

Location:

• Three days a week at a Guardian office in New York, NY, Holmdel, NJ, Bethlehem, PA, or Boston, MA

Work Authorization

• Guardian Life is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment visas. In order to be a successful applicant, you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship now or in the future.

Salary Range:

$118,980.00 - $195,465.00

The salary range reflected above is a good faith estimate of base pay for the primary location of the position. The salary for this position ultimately will be determined based on the education, experience, knowledge, and abilities of the successful candidate. In addition to salary, this role may also be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation.

Our Promise

At Guardian, you’ll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals.  Through skill-building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards.

Inspire Well-Being

As part of Guardian’s Purpose – to inspire well-being – we are committed to offering contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources to our colleagues. Explore our company benefits at www.guardianlife.com/careers/corporate/benefits. Benefits apply to full-time eligible employees. Interns are not eligible for most Company benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

Accommodations

Guardian is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Guardian also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified job applicants (and employees) to accommodate the individual's known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would create an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact MyHR@glic.com. Please note: this resource is for accommodation requests only. For all other inquires related to your application and careers at Guardian, refer to the Guardian Careers site.

Visa Sponsorship

Guardian is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment visas. In order to be a successful applicant. you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship.

Current Guardian Colleagues: Please apply through the internal Jobs Hub in Workday.