Director of Data Science in Disability at MetLife
Cary, NC
$170,000–$210,000from the description
Jul 7, 2026
Cary, NC
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A director-level data science role focused on Disability and Absence insurance products within a Group Benefits business. The position leads all advanced analytics and AI efforts for the product line — including claims auto-adjudication models, fraud detection, duration scoring, and triage — while managing a globally distributed team across the US and India. It suits a senior data science leader with insurance industry experience and hands-on expertise in machine learning, LLMs, and MLOps.
Senior level · 10+ years · New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA · Master's required · Full-time
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 60 people in the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 35–95
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $103,548–$176,968). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (9)
This role sits at the boundary between a senior individual-contributor data science leader and a people manager (Director title, global team management, direct report to CDAO). It is classified under Data Scientists (15-2051) because the primary day-to-day work described is hands-on data science — claims models, fraud models, LLM/AI architectures — with management as a secondary responsibility; Computer and Information Systems Managers (11-3021) is the close runner-up given the explicit team and resource management scope.
The degree requirement states 'Master's degree … or B.S. degree with relevant experience or continuing education.' Because a bachelor's with experience is explicitly accepted as an alternative, this would normally map to None; however, the Master's is listed first and most prominently as the baseline, and the B.S. path requires unspecified 'relevant experience or continuing education' rather than being a clean equivalent. Degree requirement is set to Masters as the stated primary minimum; hiring managers should note the B.S.-plus-experience pathway is also accepted.
Advertised seniority is set to Principal because the title is 'Director' — the highest individual-contributor/leadership band in this schema that fits a Director-level role. The actual scope and requirements (10+ years, team management, but no org-wide technical authority language) support Senior.
Location is not explicitly stated in the posting beyond 'hybrid, 3 days/week in office.' MetLife's Group Benefits headquarters is in New York; CBSA reflects that assumption.
Python and R are listed together as interchangeable statistical programming languages; Python is named as the primary with R as the alternative.
LangChain is listed under Preferred Qualifications ('a plus') as an example of AI agent frameworks.
Hadoop and Azure are listed together under Preferred Qualifications ('a plus').
Prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and evaluation frameworks are required alongside LLMs/RAG but are methodologies rather than named tools, so they are not emitted as separate skill entries.
Data/ML Ops and data governance are required but name no specific platform or tool, so they are not emitted as separate skill entries.
Read the full posting
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