Senior Manager Applied Science

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 a related field.


• 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 to communicate 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.


• Excellent communication and collaboration skills in cross-functional teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated leadership experience in mentoring junior engineers and managing cross-functional projects.


• Proven innovation track record—solutions that delivered significant business impact or led to patents.


• Self-motivated, proactive problem-solver with strong project ownership.


• Domain knowledge or experience in recommendation systems, NLP, or computer vision.


• Strong collaboration skills across multiple teams, with an ability to manage conflict and align priorities.

About the company

Good-to-have skills