Director of Data Science: Top Recruiters in Miami, Florida
The Miami Technology & AI Market
Miami is rapidly emerging as a major technology hub, attracting fintech, crypto, and enterprise software companies with its no-state-income-tax advantage, Latin American market access, and aggressive civic investment in technology infrastructure.
About This Role
The Director of Data Science leads applied machine learning and analytics teams delivering data science solutions that create measurable business value. This director manages senior data scientists, drives project prioritization, and ensures data science work moves from experimentation to production impact in collaboration with engineering and business stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead a team of 8-25 data scientists and ML engineers delivering applied AI/ML solutions
- Own the data science project portfolio, ensuring work is prioritized by business impact and technical feasibility
- Drive end-to-end ML development lifecycle from problem framing through model deployment and monitoring
- Establish experimentation standards including A/B testing, statistical power, and causal inference methodology
- Manage model performance in production, overseeing monitoring, retraining pipelines, and drift detection
- Build relationships with business stakeholders to identify high-value data science applications
- Partner with ML engineering and data engineering on model deployment infrastructure and feature pipelines
- Evaluate new ML research and tooling to inform team technical choices and capability development
- Develop data scientist career paths and provide technical mentorship to senior and mid-level practitioners
- Report data science portfolio impact in business value terms to senior leadership
Leading Employers in Miami
The Technology & AI talent pool in Miami is shaped by movement between these anchor employers and their tier-one supplier base:
Required Experience & Background
- 8+ years in data science or ML with 3+ years leading data science teams of 5+
- PhD or MS in Statistics, Computer Science, or quantitative field preferred
- Demonstrated track record of shipping ML models to production that improved business metrics
- Expert knowledge of supervised learning, statistical modeling, and experimental design
- Proficiency with Python ML ecosystem: scikit-learn, XGBoost, PyTorch/TensorFlow, and MLflow
- Strong communication skills
- Ability to explain complex ML concepts to non-technical business stakeholders
Core Leadership Competencies
- Applied ML Leadership: Proven ability to lead teams from problem definition to production ML deployment
- Experimentation Culture: Rigorous approach to hypothesis testing and attribution of business outcomes to ML models
- Technical Mentorship: Skill in developing senior data scientists toward independent research and leadership
- Business Orientation: Strong focus on connecting ML outputs to measurable business impact
- Production Mindset: Understanding of MLOps, model monitoring, and the operational requirements of production ML systems
Regulatory & Compliance Context
Directors of Data Science must ensure ML models comply with fairness and bias regulations applicable to the use case, GDPR/CCPA data minimization in model training datasets, FDA guidance for AI/ML as Software as a Medical Device in healthcare, and model risk management requirements under SR 11-7 for financial services firms.
Compensation Benchmarks for Miami, FL
Nexoval Search Partners' Approach in Miami
Nexoval Search Partners's dedicated Technology & AI practice maintains active relationships with the executive talent community across Miami and the broader Florida market. Our consultants conduct thorough market mapping of available passive and active candidates across the region's leading employers, from established industry leaders to innovative growth companies. Every engagement includes confidential outreach, rigorous competency-based assessment, and candidate presentation within 45 to 60 days of engagement launch. Nexoval Search Partners's retained search model and one-year replacement guarantee ensure every executive we place in Miami, Florida delivers long-term organizational value.