AI/ML Data Scientist

Drive AI innovation with Acuity Insights!

Join our startup-to-scaleup journey as an AI/ML Data Scientist. In this fully remote role, working from anywhere in Canada, you’ll be part of an interdisciplinary team innovating our flagship assessment platform, Casper, with AI.

Working at the intersection of machine learning innovation and ethical AI in higher education, you’ll work on complex, ambiguous problems, and lead the end-to-end design, build, and deployment of an AI-powered evaluation system.

This role offers you, a machine learning professional with advanced proficiency in Python and deep knowledge of ML libraries, the chance to work without a predefined playbook and grow your career with a people-focused company that values work-life balance, invests in learning, and creates products with real-world impact on education, admissions, and social equity.

The Future We’re Building

Imagine a world powered by everyone’s full potential.

That’s what we’re building at Acuity Insights.

Our company was founded on the need for a higher education admissions method that looks beyond academic performance and considers the whole student—their unique qualities, experiences, and strengths.

Today, our solutions help discover, nurture and realize people's potential, supporting holistic success from admissions to graduation for students, education programs, and higher education institutions across North America, the U.K., Australia, and the Gulf.

Our core assessment product, Casper, provides education programs with a more holistic view of applicants by evaluating their soft skills. Incorporating Casper's insights into the admissions process results in a larger applicant pool, enables student success, and graduates better professionals. Since 2014, Casper has been adopted by over 600 higher education programs, and more than 1 million applicants have registered to take the test.

With our core education program management solution, One45, we help medical schools and other health professions programs optimize the complex processes and critical components of their curriculum and student assessments to generate data-informed insights needed to graduate competent future healthcare professionals.

With our fast-growing data and insights solution, Analytics, we leverage critical integrations with our data warehouse and powerful dashboards to provide medical schools with deep insights and intelligence on student and program performance, powering real-time decision-making and continuous quality improvement.

Role & Opportunity Overview

As an AI/ML Data Scientist, you will join our Research team, which includes experts from the humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences. Research underpins our company’s mission and provides data-driven, ethical insights. The team has been at the forefront of developing assessment methodologies that move beyond traditional metrics and ensure our products' scientific integrity and reliability.

In this role, you’ll report to Jill Derby, our Senior Research Manager, and partner closely with Cole Walsh, our Research Scientist, on your initial project. You’ll also collaborate closely with key team members from Rating, Content and New Product Development, as well as with product directors, product marketing managers, and design and engineering teams.

In your first 12 months, you get to lead the development of our first AI-powered evaluation system for the Casper platform, leveraging machine learning to transform how we assess applicants. You’ll oversee the entire process, from data collection and validation to model training, implementation, and monitoring, while addressing challenges like aligning with human rater standards and ensuring demographic fairness.

Your work will drive significant business impact, including market scalability, operational efficiency, and an improved applicant experience. Over time, you’ll expand to other market verticals, optimize product offerings, and lead responsible AI innovations to tackle key growth challenges.

As our AI/ML Data Scientist, you’ll also help build a world-class AI and machine learning practice, define processes, tackle uncharted problems, and shape how AI/ML capabilities are embedded within Acuity Insights. Drawing from your expertise, you’ll lead transformative AI projects, set performance benchmarks, and embed fairness and explainability at every stage. Your work will deliver scalable, impactful solutions that align with our ethical standards and foster trust across diverse partners.

As an AI/ML Data Scientist, your key areas of day-to-day contribution are:

Collaboration & Communication

• Drive cross-functional alignment: Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and other Research team members to ensure AI initiatives align with strategic goals and technical requirements.
• Champion explainability: Clearly communicate complex AI processes and outcomes to technical and non-technical audiences, fostering transparency and trust.
• Lead ethical discussions: Actively participate in discussions about ethical considerations and fairness in AI to guide responsible decision-making.
• Feedback and iteration: Partner with team members to gather insights and refine AI models based on ongoing collaboration and testing.

Data Science & Machine Learning

• Design and train models: Lead the design, training, and optimization of machine learning models for evaluating responses in Casper assessments.
• Analyze and validate: Analyze large datasets, evaluate model performance against benchmarks, and ensure alignment with human rater standards.
• Ensure fairness and ethics: Develop processes to identify and mitigate bias, ensuring models are fair, explainable, and meet ethical standards.
• Incorporate best practices: Stay current with industry advancements, incorporating the latest techniques and frameworks to improve model accuracy and scalability.

Execution & Delivery

• Own model development: Oversee the full lifecycle of AI model development, from data preprocessing and feature engineering to deployment and monitoring.
• Optimize and refine: Continuously monitor AI systems in production, refining models to maintain accuracy and reliability.
• Drive Impact: Deliver scalable, cost-effective AI solutions and enhance the accessibility of assessments.
• Measure success: Establish and track key metrics to assess AI model performance, fairness, and impact on business objectives.

Experiences & Skills You Bring

1. Machine Learning Expertise: You have worked in machine learning and data science or related roles or initiatives in which you’ve trained, retrained, and monitored ML systems. While not required, formal education or study in Statistics, Computer Science, or related fields can enhance your ability to understand complex concepts and effectively communicate with internal teams and external partners in a scholarly context and academic environment. 
2. Technical Proficiency: Advanced Python skills are essential, as it will be your primary programming language. Familiarity with SQL, R, and ML libraries (e.g., Scikit-learn, PyTorch) is highly valued. Experience with LLMs like OpenAI or Hugging Face is especially useful, as they will play a key role in extracting insights that support fair and meaningful scoring algorithms.
3. Data Engineering and Modeling: You understand data structures, have constructed and optimized data pipelines, and applied data modelling techniques. Familiarity with software architecture, though not required, can strengthen your collaboration with the engineering team and help integrate the AI model into internal applications.
4. Analytical Depth: Solid foundation in probability, statistics, algorithms, and benchmark-driven approaches to evaluate AI quality, accuracy, and fairness.
5. Focus on Ethics and Fairness: You naturally prioritize fairness and ethical AI development, take ownership of ethical and fairness considerations, and apply reflective thinking and empathy to create accurate, equitable and just models that are explainable and transparent.  
6. Collaborative Mindset: You bring high emotional intelligence and a passion for working collaboratively and cross-functionally to harness diverse expertise, leverage multiple perspectives to solve complex problems and explore more robust and innovative solutions and align with organizational goals. 
7. Innovation and Problem-Solving: You have a history of tackling complex, undefined problems and thrive in ambiguous and uncharted territories, exploring innovative solutions to technical challenges.
8. Communication & Storytelling: You have a knack for effectively translating complex AI models and insights into clear, compelling and data-informed narratives for technical and non-technical audiences that instill trust and confidence and help drive alignment. 
9. Passion for Learning & Growth: A natural curiosity and eagerness to explore new ideas drive your commitment to innovation and problem-solving. You embrace challenges with humility, seeking feedback, learning from setbacks, and staying current with AI and machine learning advancements. 

Selection Process

We review every application. We consider all your professional experiences and how you have applied your skills and knowledge to add value and make an impact. We also look for evidence that you are naturally caring, curious, driven, and can be resilient in rapidly changing environments.

To ensure a fair process, you will receive equal consideration whether you apply, get introduced as a referral, or directly contact the manager or recruiter for this role.

Applicants who do not live in Canada or have a work permit will automatically be disqualified.

Interview Process

We have designed our interview process to be a two-way discovery and create space for meaningful conversations.

We want to get to know you personally and professionally, understand your career journey and experiences, relevant skills and abilities, professional interests and priorities, and assess your alignment with our business needs and what we can offer you.

We also want you to have the information you need to make an informed decision about this opportunity. That’s why we encourage you to stay curious and ask questions every step of the way.

Here’s an overview of the process: 

1. Application Review: A human reviews your application to assess potential and fit.
2. Recruiter Conversation: A 60-90 minute call to share your professional journey, career interests and priorities and learn about the company, culture, and team.
3. Asynchronous Project: Complete a brief take-home project to showcase your technical and problem-solving skills.
4. Manager & Peer Conversations: Meet your potential manager and a technical peer 1-on-1. Discuss your project, work experience, and technical abilities while exploring the team’s day-to-day.
5. Team Conversations: Meet other future team members, including leaders, peers, and collaborators, to assess team alignment and learn more about life at Acuity Insights.
6. Decision: The Hiring Manager consolidates feedback and makes a decision, typically within 2-4 days.
7. Offer & Reference Check: If we have found a mutual match, we'll invite you to an offer conversation. The offer is contingent on completing reference checks.

Compensation 

Several factors will inform our offer: your unique qualifications, experience, expected contributions and salary needs, market data, budget, and internal pay equity.

The target annual compensation for this role is $115,000 to $140,000. While this range does not represent the full Individual Contributor salary band, it reflects the budget allocated to fill the position. 

Benefits From Day 1

• Flexible and remote work. Have the freedom to work from anywhere within Canada and work from abroad for up to 6 weeks per year, and configure your schedule and work hours to best suit you. 
• Prioritize rest and time off. Join the team in our two-week year-end company closure, enjoy flexible, self-directed vacation (most take 4-6 weeks annually), and enjoy an extra Friday off each month from February to November.
• Invest in your growth. Access a $3,000 yearly learning budget to support your professional and personal development. 
• Stake in the company. Become a partial owner of Acuity Insights when you join, sharing in long-term value creation and financial success through our employee stock option plan.
• Save for retirement. Join our GRSP matching program through Wealthsimple. We match contributions up to 2% of your salary. 
• Support for health & wellness. Access comprehensive health benefits for yourself and your dependents through Equitable Life of Canada and Nivati to nurture and enhance your holistic health and well-being. 
• Grow your family. Take parental leave, regardless of your role in expanding your family, and receive a top-up for 16 weeks beyond EI benefits.

Life & People at Acuity Insights

At Acuity Insights, you’ll be part of a community of over 125 professionals, mostly based in Canada. While we primarily collaborate remotely, our team members connect socially and occasionally co-work in person in our larger people pockets, too.  

Human Qualities That Help People Thrive at Acuity

Our team is built on a set of shared values: caring, curious, and driven. We value people who show empathy, listen actively, and act with integrity. We want our team members to be naturally curious and open to exploring new ideas and viewpoints, bringing urgency and creativity to problem-solving. Our team thrives on continuous improvement, resilience in the face of changes around us, and self-awareness. Above all, we believe in purposeful work that aligns with our shared values and makes the world a better place. 

Our Commitment to Inclusion and Belonging

We strive to be a workplace where every person feels respected, valued, and fully supported. Our environment and supporting policies are designed to foster a culture of belonging, equity, and work-life balance. We embrace each team member's unique strengths and lived experiences, recognizing that diversity enriches our environment and drives our success.

We encourage applicants from non-traditional backgrounds or historically marginalized and underrepresented groups to join us.

Thanks for considering Acuity Insights as your next employer!

PS: We’re Taking a Winter Pause!

At Acuity Insights, we value breaks to rest and recharge. That is why hiring activities are on hold now and throughout our Winter Holiday Shutdown from December 21, 2024, to January 5, 2025.

We are committed to reviewing your application and following up with any potential next steps after we return on January 6.

It might also help to know that our interview process typically takes 3-4 weeks from an initial conversation to a potential offer. Hang tight - and thank you for your patience!