Lead Data Scientist (Founding Team)

Job Description

The Mission That Moves Us: Tensor Planet is on a mission to keep heavy-duty fleets rolling. Our AI-driven platform combines telematics, sensor feeds and repair logs to predict failures before they happen. Our predictive maintenance product blends cutting-edge AI: time-series models, anomaly detection algorithms, and LLM-powered diagnostic copilots with actionable recommendations. What You Will Do: Shape the data science practice: Lead our ML roadmap and drive outcomes to improve uptime and minimize false positive alerts. Engineer robust pipelines: Design ETL pipelines to ingest terabytes of IOT data from diverse vehicle systems. Collaborate with engineering to productionize models. Innovate with ML and Generative AI: Build ML algorithms and LLM-based conversational intelligence to power copilots for fleet managers and vehicle technicians. Embed domain expertise: Translate vehicle mechanics knowledge into high-value features. Partner with product teams to ground models in real-world behavior. Mentor a high-performing team: Grow and coach a data science team. Establish best practices for model monitoring, explainability, and reproducibility. Challenges You Will Tackle: Sensor Fusion Complexity: Integrating high-frequency CAN-bus streams with third-party IoT feeds, historical maintenance logs and real-world context. Scale & Latency: Delivering real-time predictions across hundreds of vehicles with minimal false positives. Regulatory & Safety Constraints: Ensuring models comply with industry standards and support safety-critical decision-making. Who You Are: Experience: 7+ years in data science with at least 3 years in vehicle telematics, Industrial IoT, or automotive diagnostics. Technical Skills: Expert in Python, ML, SQL/NoSQL and data streaming platforms, deployment workflows - containerization, CI/CD, model tracking and observability. Vehicle Expertise: Deep familiarity with CAN-bus protocols (J1939, OBD-II), telematics standards, and core vehicle systems like engine, transmission, and exhaust. Leadership & Communication: Proven track record mentoring teams, delivering production ML models, and translating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders. Startup DNA: You thrive on ambiguity, unafraid to roll up your sleeves, experiment boldly and celebrate learning from failed runs . What’s In It For You: Ownership & Impact: Lead data science teams; your work will directly power multimillion-dollar savings for customers. Work at the AI Frontier: Innovate with LLMs and real-time ML pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI, while making it useful and understandable. Compensation & Incentives: Benefit from competitive salaries and ESOPs. Who We Are : Tensor Planet is a fast-growing startup backed by a venture accelerator operating in a $20 billion market. We’re running live pilots with waste haulers across the US to help slash vehicle breakdowns by 50%, lower repair costs by 30% and extend fleet life by 25%. What’s Our Culture: We dream big, move with urgency, learn from failures, and thrive on collaboration. We value transparency, curiosity and the right attitude. Tensor Planet is an equal-opportunity employer building a team as diverse as the fleets we serve. Come Join Our Team! If you’re passionate about keeping fleets on the road and have fun doing it, join us now. Be a part of our growth story and scale with us. Drop us a note at careers@tensorplanet.com .