Lead Data Scientist

Summary

Guidewire-Cyence is searching for a Lead Data Scientist to join us on our mission to transform cyber-insurance with the industry's leading cyber risk platform. Cyber is the #1 threat to US national security and the fastest growing line of business in P&C insurance. Our work here makes a meaningful impact in this space! You will report to the Director of Risk Modeling and you will also be involved in several other initiatives across the broader Data & Analytics Division.
Who We Are, What We Believe, & What We Build
Guidewire is the AWS of insurance. As the market leader, 540 insurance companies run on our mission-critical platform. Every second, we support underwriters crafting policies and agents settling claims. We believe that making a great decision should not require 100 in-house data scientists. Our products range from cyber risk quantification to potent ML sandboxes. We are a post-IPO company with the vision to redefine insurance.
Who You Are
You are a detail-oriented, passionate data scientist who builds models that hold up in production. You have strong experience developing GLM-based and stochastic frequency-severity models similar to those used in natural-catastrophe portfolios (e.g., severity tails, dependency structures, event simulation, and portfolio aggregation). You are familiar across AWS tools and environments — SageMaker for training/hosting, EMR/Spark for large-scale feature pipelines, Glue for orchestration, Lambda and Step Functions for serverless workflows, and Athena/Redshift/S3 for analytics and storage. You write clean, maintainable Python/SQL and Spark code with unit/integration tests, versioning, and CI/CD, and you partner closely with engineering to deploy models as services or batch pipelines. You balance statistical rigor with pragmatic delivery, communicating uncertainty and model trade-offs to both technical and executive audiences. Experience in CAT modeling is a plus!

Job Description

Responsibilities

• Develop, calibrate, validate, and stress test probabilistic cyber risk models for the (re)insurance and financial services markets.

• Develop and implement methodologies to quantify the financial impact of cyber risk on single entities as well as large insured portfolios, with a specific focus on Targeted attacks, cloud outages, and digital/physical supply chain-related events.

• Explore different data sources to come up with modeling features and assumptions to enhance our set of probabilistic risk models.

• Define and implement a globally consistent best practice process for data validation, feature selection, and modeling of catastrophe exposures.

• Integrating/automating modeling processes in our production pipeline to feed our platform.

• Communicate results to internal and external stakeholders. Engage and collaborate directly with clients on a deep technical level.

• Collaborate with other leaders across the Analytics organization, including Product Management, Machine Learning and Data Engineering Teams, UX/UI Engineers, and Client Engagement Leaders.

• At Guidewire, we foster a culture of curiosity, innovation, and responsible use of AI—empowering our teams to continuously leverage emerging technologies and data-driven insights to enhance productivity and outcomes.

Qualifications & Requirements

• Education: PhD or MS in Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Computer/Data Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field.

• Experience Level: 7+ years in applied statistics/data science or quantitative risk modeling, with demonstrable delivery of scalable models that run in production.

• Modeling Expertise: Proven track record building and validating advanced predictive GLM and stochastic frequency–severity models (e.g., Poisson/NB, Tweedie, GLMMs), tail modeling/EVT, dependency structures (e.g., Gaussian copulas), Monte Carlo simulation, and portfolio aggregation—ideally in insurance or catastrophe-risk contexts. Familiarity with advanced sampling methodologies for multi-variate distributions and the usage of  common libraries such as MLFlow is a plus.

• Methodological Rigor: Strong command of feature engineering, uncertainty quantification, calibration/back-testing, A/B or hypothesis testing, and explain ability for executive and regulatory audiences.

• Data & Engineering: Proven ability to work with terabyte-scale datasets using distributed processing frameworks and cloud data platforms. Proficiency in SQL and Python for data manipulation, ETL, and large-scale analytics. Experience with modern data warehousing solutions (e.g., Iceberg, Redshift, or their equivalents).

• Cloud & MLOps: Proficiency with AWS services for model development and data access (SageMaker, S3, Athena) and orchestration frameworks (Airflow or Step Functions). Familiarity with other AWS data tools (Glue, EMR, Lambda).

• Production-Ready Code: Proficiency writing clean, well-documented, and version-controlled Python and SQL (and PySpark where appropriate). Familiarity with testing frameworks and ability to write unit tests for validation. Understanding of CI/CD principles and experience collaborating with engineering teams on model deployment and code review processes.

• Data Fluency: Comfortable working with large, messy structured and semi-structured data, including missing-data handling, time series, and event/claims data; strong data quality and documentation practices.

• Leadership & Collaboration: Experience leading projects and mentoring other data scientists/engineers; ability to translate model trade-offs to product, engineering, and business stakeholders.

• Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to create clear technical docs, model reports, and executive summaries.

• Demonstrated ability to embrace AI and apply it to your role as well as use data-driven insights to drive innovation, productivity, and continuous improvement.

Nice to have

• Domain exposure to catastrophe (nat-cat or cyber-cat) modeling, re/insurance portfolios, or risk aggregation frameworks.

• Familiarity with model governance, validation standards, and compliance in regulated environments.

#predictivemodeling #catastrophe #cyber

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $160,000 - $240,000 . Your base pay will depend on your experience, skills, education, training, and location among other factors. All full-time positions or part-time roles working 30 hours or more a week at Guidewire are eligible for benefits that support their health and well-being including health, dental, and vision insurance, paid time off, and a company sponsored retirement plan. In addition, some roles may be eligible for the annual company bonus plan, commissions, and/or long term incentive awards which are contingent on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, company and employee performance.

Disability Accommodations and Guidewire’s Appeals Process. Guidewire provides accommodations to the hiring process to create a fair opportunity for candidates with disabilities to contend for open positions. Accommodation requests should be directed to [email protected]. If things do not go as hoped, we invite you to use our appeals process. Guidewire promises to independently review any denied accommodation and any decision not to offer you the position. The appeals process is the same in either case. Within five business days of receiving a notice of denial of an accommodation, or receiving a notice of your non-selection for a vacancy, e-mail [email protected] to make an appeal. Guidewire will assign a new decision-maker to review the request and/or hiring decision, who will then notify you in writing of a decision within 10 business days.

About Guidewire

Guidewire is the platform P&C insurers trust to engage, innovate, and grow efficiently. We combine digital, core, analytics, and AI to deliver our platform as a cloud service. More than 540+ insurers in 40 countries, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.

As a partner to our customers, we continually evolve to enable their success. We are proud of our unparalleled implementation track record with 1600+ successful projects, supported by the largest R&D team and partner ecosystem in the industry. Our Marketplace provides hundreds of applications that accelerate integration, localization, and innovation.

For more information, please visit www.guidewire.com and follow us on Twitter: @Guidewire_PandC.

Guidewire Software, Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to an inclusive workplace, and believe that a diversity of perspectives, abilities, and cultures is a key to our success. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability. All offers are contingent upon passing a criminal history and other background checks where it's applicable to the position.