Toptal

Role Description We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join us as the first Data Scientist on a new product we are building. This is a founding role: you will shape the data science function from the ground up, set technical direction, and own the end-to-end delivery of intelligent systems that define how our product creates value. You will tackle open-ended problems involving: - Task Mining - Process Mining - Behavioral workflow analysis - Pattern discovery - Predictive modeling - Applied GenAI/ML systems The goal is not just to build models, but to turn raw interaction data into measurable product and business impact: discovered workflows, bottlenecks, optimization opportunities, and scalable foundations for future DS/ML work. This is a remote position. We do not offer visa sponsorship or assistance. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English. Qualifications - 5+ years of professional experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, or Applied ML roles. - Demonstrated experience operating as the sole or lead Data Scientist on a product or team — owning problems end-to-end without senior DS supervision. - Strong experience with supervised and unsupervised ML, modern ML/data tooling, and the judgment to select the right approach for the problem. - Practical familiarity with representation learning, sequence modeling, Transformers, LLMs, or GenAI systems where relevant to product use cases. - Experience handling large-scale structured, unstructured, event, or interaction datasets. - Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL, with hands-on experience using tools such as PyTorch, scikit-learn, pandas/Polars, experiment tracking, and production ML workflows. - Experience deploying ML models, data pipelines, or intelligent systems into production. - Familiarity with Task Mining, Process Mining, event-log analysis, behavioral analytics, workflow automation, or adjacent domains. - Advanced degree in Computer Science, Data Science, AI, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field is a plus; equivalent practical experience is strongly valued. Requirements - A founder’s mindset: full responsibility for outcomes, not just deliverables. - Comfort operating in high ambiguity: able to turn unclear product goals, noisy data, and incomplete requirements into an executable roadmap. - Strong business sense — connects technical work to commercial impact and measurable product value. - Pragmatic technical judgment — knows when to use advanced ML, when to simplify, and when better data, labeling, or evaluation is the real bottleneck. - Ability to build foundations for rapid scaling: reusable datasets, pipelines, metrics, evaluation frameworks, and modeling patterns future DS/ML hires can build on. - Highly proactive problem solver who acts without waiting for detailed instructions. - Excellent communication skills, with the confidence to push back constructively and propose direction. Nice to Have - Previous experience as a first or early Data Scientist at a startup or new product line. - Direct experience with Task Mining, Process Mining, workflow intelligence, RPA, or productivity analytics. - Experience with LLMs and Generative AI applications, especially evaluation, structured outputs, semantic labeling, summarization, or human-in-the-loop workflows. - Experience working with privacy-sensitive behavioral, productivity, or user-interaction data. - Experience with product experimentation, causal inference, or measuring the impact of workflow/process interventions. - Knowledge of MLOps and distributed processing frameworks, such as Spark. - Experience with cloud environments, especially GCP.

• Help clients achieve transformational revenue growth by combining the right expertise, talent, and technology into cohesive, outcome-driven solutions. • Lead from the front, building relationships, driving engagements, and ensuring Toptal Sales solutions deliver clear, quantifiable client results. • Serve as the primary client-facing executive for Toptal Sales, leading strategic engagements and ensuring client satisfaction and success. • Engage directly with C-level and founder audiences to diagnose growth challenges, design solutions, and deliver measurable outcomes. • Build long-term client partnerships that expand Toptal’s footprint and influence within key accounts. • Partner with Toptal leadership to develop and execute the strategic roadmap for the Sales Practice. • Define market priorities, target segments, and the service portfolio required to meet client demand. • Collaborate across Marketing, Sales, Delivery, and Talent Operations teams to ensure seamless execution and growth alignment. • Design and scale differentiated service offerings—ranging from Sales Effectiveness and Readiness Programs to GTM Strategy, Sales Operations, and Technology-Enabled Managed Services. • Continuously refine packaging, pricing, and delivery models to align with market needs and client outcomes. • Lead early-stage client engagements to validate new offerings and establish product-market fit. • Translate client insights into actionable input for offering enhancement and GTM strategy. • Ensure the Sales Practice is supported by top-tier experts across strategy, operations, enablement, and execution. • Define and uphold delivery standards and “The Toptal Way” for consistent client excellence. • Partner with Talent Operations to anticipate demand and align supply capabilities with emerging client needs. • Represent Toptal Sales as a trusted authority in revenue acceleration and sales transformation. • Contribute to market education through thought leadership, client forums, and strategic ecosystem partnerships (PE, VC, and growth advisory firms).

• Own and lead all aspects of an established agile team, including backlog grooming, triage, and prioritization, and cross-functional coordination. • Define the scope of new product features and ongoing improvements across web, mobile, and desktop applications. • Write and prioritize user stories and define acceptance criteria. • Establish and maintain a high level of credibility with internal and external partners. • Break down complex problems and use data and analytics, combined with high-quality user research, to inform product direction. • Track progress, assess risks, coordinate delivery, and actively communicate contingency and mitigation plans for the team. • Run various ad-hoc research and business analyses to assess opportunities and risks. • Take ownership of identifying and solving complex product challenges that align with both short-term goals and long-term strategic initiatives. • Apply system-analyst techniques and procedures, including consulting with users to determine hardware, software, or systems functional specifications. • In the first week, expect to: Onboard and integrate into Toptal while independently starting to study and learn the Toptal product suite. • Become acquainted with your product area, the product goals, and those you will partner with. • In the first month, expect to: Work cross-functionally with Designers, Engineers, and senior stakeholders to organize and prioritize your high-level roadmap and backlog. • Start collaborating closely with your development team. • Take over all in-flight and planned initiatives. • In the first three months, expect to: Fully support a product category, working collaboratively to complete quarterly planning and set OKRs. • While exercising discretion and independent judgment, launch features that deliver high business impact. • Be fully embedded into and own a development team. • Monitor and measure the success of your initiatives against company goals. • Continuously improve the team’s processes through meaningful contributions. • In the first six months, expect to: Drive end-to-end delivery of our mobile and desktop apps, ensuring feature parity, high-quality user experience, and alignment with the web platform roadmap. • Independently discover new product opportunities for your backlog. • Develop a repeatable model for delivering upon our roadmap initiatives. • Work across the Product team to measure and refine the roadmap, backlog, and processes to make improvements over time. • Constantly re-evaluate your roadmap’s alignment with the strategic goals of the business, adjusting where necessary. • In the first year, expect to: Deliver your roadmap priorities and promises. • Ensure your team has an incredible record of building impactful products in a timely and elegant fashion. • Work cross-functionally to scale your team to meet the growing needs of our business and our users.

• Understand current and future demand. Enable, educate, and directly support the sales force to best position this practice with Toptal clients and win new business. • Lead client conversations, presenting Toptal’s perspective on innovation and experience topics, and ask exploratory questions to better understand client needs. • Through lead-generation activities and cold-calling, you will prospect, educate, qualify, and develop sales-ready leads and opportunities from unsigned clients and accounts. • Enthusiastically explain Toptal’s vision, pinpoint opportunities, and generate interest. • Build rapport through strategic outreach and a well-rounded client and industry knowledge. • Research clients and stay informed on industry trends will be key to your success. • Collaborate with your team and Sales Executives to pursue opportunities, recommend appropriate follow-up actions, and schedule qualified meetings. • Communicating via Zoom and Slack is critical to maintaining a high level of collaboration and clear communication within the team. • Being open to and implementing feedback will be critical success factors in this role and at Toptal.

• Acquire new enterprise accounts and build, scale, and deepen a portfolio of high-value enterprise accounts. • Actively prospect and drive the acquisition of new, strategically aligned HLS accounts. • Own and expand a portfolio of strategically important enterprise HLS accounts. • Build and sustain senior executive relationships. • Define and execute account strategy, including opportunity creation and pipeline development. • Lead solution development and deal execution. • Partner with Enterprise Sales Executives for account expansion. • Maintain disciplined pipeline and account intelligence. • Ensure high-quality delivery outcomes. • Lead strategic conversations with existing clients.

• Actively prospect and drive the acquisition of new, strategically aligned HLS accounts (net new logos) to grow the overall client base. • Own and expand a portfolio of strategically important enterprise HLS accounts, with direct accountability for revenue growth, portfolio scale, and client outcomes. • Build and sustain senior executive relationships, establishing Toptal as a trusted partner across critical business initiatives. • Define and execute account strategy, including opportunity creation, pipeline development, and multi-year growth planning. • Lead solution development and deal execution in partnership with Industry GMs, Practice Leaders, and Delivery teams. • Partner with Enterprise Sales Executives to drive coordinated account expansion and maximize total account value. • Maintain disciplined pipeline and account intelligence to support accurate forecasting and informed decision-making. • Ensure high-quality delivery outcomes by aligning cross-functional teams to client objectives and expectations. • Lead strategic conversations with existing clients, while exercising discretion and independent judgment.

• Write elegant, efficient, and testable Ruby code that is easy to maintain and debug. • Cover code with tests and perform manual testing of features, while reviewing the work of colleagues. • As a true teammate, continuously improve the team’s processes, brainstorm ideas, communicate statuses, and progress. • Mentor team members, provide feedback, and continuously improve as a professional. • Learn new concepts and technologies. • Design, develop, document, analyze, create, test, or modify computer or cloud-based systems or programs.

• Write elegant, efficient, and testable Ruby code that is easy to maintain and debug • Cover code with tests and perform manual testing of features, while reviewing the work of colleagues • Work on the infrastructure part of the project, collaborating with Infrastructure Engineers • As a true teammate, continuously improve the team’s processes, brainstorm ideas, communicate statuses, and progress • Mentor team members, provide feedback, and continuously improve as a professional • Learn new concepts and technologies • Design, develop, document, analyze, create, test or modify computer or cloud-based systems or programs

• Design, build, and maintain outstanding, reusable, reliable, and testable TypeScript code. • You will build and maintain first-class software used by numerous businesses. • Review the work of your colleagues. • As a great teammate, continuously improve the team’s processes, brainstorm ideas, and communicate statuses and progress. • Mentor other people, provide feedback, and continuously improve yourself. • Provide suggestions to our stakeholders regarding usability improvements. • Proactively identify technical debt and product areas that require attention or improvements and suggest improvements in our technology stack. • In the first week, expect to: Begin your onboarding and integration into Toptal. Get familiar with our product and team structure. Review our extensive Toptal Engineering Documentation to become familiar with our working processes. Meet your mentor and work together on the ideal ramp-up plan. • In the first month, expect to: Get familiar with our front-end architecture and all the tools that we use. Learn about the processes that we follow. Attend regular meetings, like technical calls, retrospectives, and the monthly Engineering All-hands meeting. Develop your first tasks and have them deployed to production. Develop a deeper understanding of our technology, processes, and product pipeline. • In the first three months, expect to: Actively supply software planning, development, and maintenance. Be ready to propose and implement improvements to Toptal’s processes and codebase. Get comfortable in your daily work within your team and deliver value in a regular cadence. Review code written by your colleagues. Suggest and implement improvements to Toptal’s processes and codebase, while exercising discretion and independent judgment. • In the first six months, expect to: Contribute to planning and executing multi-sprint initiatives within your team. Become a key part of the team, be responsible for certain areas, and help others inside and outside of the team. Lead technical initiatives on our team. • In the first year, expect to: Have a detailed understanding of Toptal’s technical stack, collaboration rituals, processes, performance, and future work. Determine what your career path looks like at Toptal. Mentor Toptal’s new team members.

• You will participate in defining, testing, and validating first-class software web applications and Slack bots serving our internal Core team. • Work to maintain and improve our automated test suites in RSpec, Jest, Playwright, and Cypress, as well as to set up automated test suites for new products or tools from scratch. • Estimate, prioritize, plan, and coordinate testing activities. • Identify, record, document thoroughly, and track bugs. • Review the work of your colleagues from white box (PR reviews) and black box (manual and exploratory) testing perspectives. • Improve your team’s processes, brainstorm ideas, and communicate your status and progress. • Collaborate closely with stakeholders and users throughout the preliminary planning phase, ensuring a holistic understanding of the product to plan and deliver new features effectively. • Contribute to writing Acceptance Criteria and Definition of Done for the team’s features. • Review requirements, specifications, and technical design documents to provide timely and meaningful feedback and identify corner cases we must address appropriately. • Track quality assurance metrics, like defect densities and open defect counts. • Stay up-to-date with new testing tools and test strategies. • Development experience, including design, implementation, documentation, and maintenance of test automation in Ruby on Rails, React, and NodeJS (a plus). • Mentor other people, provide feedback, and grow as a part of the team. • Actively participate in meetings, including Scrum meetings, squad meetings, pair programming sessions, etc.