Senior Manager, Applied Science

Job Description: 

Tekion is seeking a passionate and dynamic Senior Manager of Applied Science to lead a team of applied Scientists focused on building next-generation AI applications on the cloud. You will work closely with product, business, machine learning engineering, and customer success teams to align priorities, timelines, and deliverables. You will drive AI/ML development efforts and ensure customer engagements are supported with high-quality, scalable solutions that deliver measurable impact.

Key Responsibilities:  

Leadership and Team Management 

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of applied scientists, including senior scientists and team leads. 

• Build and scale a high-performing team of 5-8 scientists; provide regular mentoring and establish clear career development paths. 

• Set and promote best practices for research, development, code quality, and technical excellence 
   

Customer Engagement & Deliverable Management 

• Collaborate with product and customer success teams to prioritize customer needs and align development timelines accordingly. 

• Integrate customer feedback into development cycles, adapting priorities as business needs evolve. 

• Act as the technical point of contact for customer engagements, setting clear expectations for deliverables and timelines. 

• Ensure high-quality, on-time delivery of customer-facing AI/ML products that meet or exceed expectations. 
   

Product Development & Strategy 

• Lead the execution of the R&D and product roadmap, aligning ML initiatives with business goals and customer priorities. 

• Drive product strategy in collaboration with product management, business development, and operations. 

• Provide architectural and technical leadership on key projects, ensuring robustness, scalability,and flexibility. 
   

Scalability & Best Practices 

• Foster a high-performing team through agile workflows, continuous improvement, and strong delivery processes. 

• Architect and implement scalable AI/ML solutions aligned with ASD's long-term vision, using cloud-native technologies and microservices. 

• Oversee the full ML lifecycle-including data collection, model training, validation, deployment, and monitoring-ensuring effective team collaboration and resource management. 

• Promote advanced techniques such as model compression, quantization, and distributed training. 

• Champion industry best practices in development to ensure code quality, performance, and scalability. 

• Stay current with advancements in ML and lead team engagement in the broader scientific community. 

• Collaborate with design, product, and engineering teams to deliver high-performance solutions in a fast-evolving environment. 
   

Required Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Data Science, Mathematics, Operations Research, Applied 

• Mathematics, Computational Science, or related fields. 

• Strong foundation in probability, statistics, and scientific problem-solving. 

• 12+ years of hands-on experience in analytics, data science, and deep learning in business-critical environments. 

• 3+ years of experience managing teams of 5 or more, preferably in applied science or cross-functional settings.. 

• Proven track record of delivering high-impact, data-driven solutions to complex business problems. 

• Proficient in machine learning, deep learning, and explainable AI techniques, with the ability tocommunicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders. 

• Experience developing and deploying state-of-the-art ML models tailored to specific business needs. 

• Strong programming skills in Python and SQL; experience with feature engineering and deep learning pipelines. 

• Familiarity with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, Keras, and PyTorch. 

• Experience with computer vision (e.g., OpenCV) and natural language processing (e.g., spaCy). 

• Skilled in the Design of Experiments for scientific testing and optimization. 

• Proficient in Git for version control and collaboration. 

• Working knowledge of cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, and Azure. 

• Strong analytical thinking and structured problem-solving abilities.