Sr Staff Research Scientist

Senior Staff Research Scientist

At GEICO, we offer a rewarding career where your ambitions are met with endless possibilities. Every day we honor our iconic brand by offering quality coverage to millions of customers and being there when they need us most. We thrive through relentless innovation to exceed our customers' expectations while making a real impact for our company through our shared purpose. When you join our company, we want you to feel valued, supported and proud to work here. That's why we offer The GEICO Pledge: Great Company, Great Culture, Great Rewards and Great Careers.

We are seeking a Senior Staff Research Scientist with profound expertise to drive the direction, vision, and architectural standards for enterprise-scale AI/ML initiatives. As a self-directed technical leader within GEICO's AI Research team, you will architect and deliver innovative AI/ML solutions that span multiple business domains, define the future of insurance operations, and accelerate transformation across the company. You will set technical strategy, mentor scientists and engineers at all levels, and partner closely with senior leadership to align AI investments with measurable business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Drive the Direction and Vision of AI/ML Initiatives: Define and own the technical strategy and long-term roadmap for cross-functional AI/ML programs, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and scalable, robust, and compliant delivery.
• Identify High-Impact Opportunities: Surface and shape high-value AI use cases through deep engagement with product, engineering, data, and business leaders; translate ambiguous needs into actionable ML problem statements and investment cases.
• Architecture and Technical Leadership: Architect end-to-end AI/ML systems spanning data acquisition, feature engineering, model development, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring across online and batch environments. Establish standards for scalability, reliability, observability, security, compliance, and cost efficiency.
• Development and Productionization: Lead the full lifecycle of model development from concept to production, including rapid prototyping, A/B testing, causal inference, and continuous improvement with clear delivery plans and milestones.
• ROI Measurement and Experimentation: Establish rigorous KPI frameworks, experimentation strategies, and causal analysis to quantify business impact, prioritize investments, and guide decision-making for portfolio-level initiatives.
• Innovation and Research Integration: Stay current with cutting-edge ML/AI research. Prototype and translate novel techniques into hardened, scalable solutions within GEICO's insurance ecosystem.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Drive collaboration across Product, Engineering, Data Platform, Governance, Legal, Security, and Operations to ensure responsible, reliable, and effective AI adoption.
• Mentorship and Capability Building: Mentor research scientists and engineers, elevate technical standards, and cultivate a culture of scientific rigor, engineering excellence, and continuous learning.
• Presentations and Executive Engagement: Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences. Present to senior leadership, setting context, explaining trade-offs, and building alignment and enthusiasm for AI/ML initiatives.
• Evangelism and Thought Leadership: Champion the transformative role of AI/ML across GEICO by speaking at internal forums, contributing to leadership discussions, and setting high standards that influence practices beyond your immediate team.
• Strategic and Cultural Leadership: Contribute to the overarching strategy, roadmap, and operating model for AI/ML at GEICO. Foster a culture of craftsmanship, innovation, accountability, and excellence.

Qualifications:

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience with an exceptional track record of innovation and impact.
• Minimum of 8 years of professional experience delivering applied AI/ML solutions in production, with a proven record of leading end-to-end model development and cross-functional initiatives with enterprise impact.
• Deep theoretical and practical expertise in statistical learning, machine learning, deep learning, and large language models; ability to reason from first principles and select appropriate methods under real-world constraints.
• Demonstrated experience establishing KPI frameworks, experimentation strategies, and causal analysis to quantify model impact and inform prioritization.
• Proven ability to mentor and lead senior research scientists and engineers; establish and enforce high standards for code quality, testing, documentation, and reproducibility.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills; ability to influence senior executives and drive alignment across product, engineering, and business functions.
• Extensive experience with Python and SQL; deep hands-on expertise with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Scikit-learn.
• Ability to solve complex technical challenges and craft long-term strategic visions that scale across teams and business areas.

Preferred Skills:

• Advanced modeling experience in numerical optimization, NLP, LLMs, and reinforcement learning; familiarity with evaluation strategies, guardrails, prompt design, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), red-teaming, and human-in-the-loop workflows.
• Research experience in computer science, statistics, machine learning, operations research, or related fields; record of patents, publications, or impactful open-source contributions.
• Strong background in experimentation platforms, causal inference, and counterfactual modeling.
• Experience with responsible AI, model governance, and risk management in regulated environments; familiarity with insurance operations is a plus.

Work Locations: Candidates must be open to the following locations:

• Chevy Chase, Maryland
• Palo Alto, CA
• New York City, NY
• Dallas, TX
• Seattle, WA
• Chicago, IL
• Austin, TX

This is a unique opportunity to shape the architectural direction of AI at GEICO, define and deliver transformative AI/ML solutions at enterprise scale, and mentor the next generation of research scientists. If you are passionate about driving innovation, measurable business impact, and a culture of excellence, we encourage you to apply.

Annual Salary: $150,000.00 - $300,000.00 The above annual salary range is a general guideline. Multiple factors are taken into consideration to arrive at the final hourly rate/annual salary to be offered to the selected candidate. Factors include, but are not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the role, the selected candidate's work experience, education and training, the work location as well as market and business considerations.

GEICO will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.

The GEICO Pledge:

Great Company: At GEICO, we help our customers through life's twists and turns. Our mission is to protect people when they need it most and we're constantly evolving to stay ahead of their needs.

We're an iconic brand that thrives on innovation, exceeding our customers' expectations and enabling our collective success. From day one, you'll take on exciting challenges that help you grow and collaborate with dynamic teams who want to make a positive impact on people's lives.

Great Careers: We offer a career where you can learn, grow, and thrive through personalized development programs, created with your career and your potential in mind. You'll have access to industry leading training, certification assistance, career mentorship and coaching with supportive leaders at all levels.

Great Culture: We foster an inclusive culture of shared success, rooted in integrity, a bias for action and a winning mindset. Grounded by our core values, we have an established culture of caring, inclusion, and belonging, that values different perspectives. Our teams are led by dynamic, multi-faceted teams led by supportive leaders, driven by performance excellence and unified under a shared purpose.

As part of our culture, we also offer employee engagement and recognition programs that reward the positive impact our work makes on the lives of our customers.

Great Rewards: We offer compensation and benefits built to enhance your physical well-being, mental and emotional health and financial future.

• Comprehensive Total Rewards program that offers personalized coverage tailor-made for you and your family's overall well-being.
• Financial benefits including market-competitive compensation; a 401K savings plan vested from day one that offers a 6% match; performance and recognition-based incentives; and tuition assistance.
• Access to additional benefits like mental healthcare as well as fertility and adoption assistance.
• Supports flexibility- We provide workplace flexibility as well as our GEICO Flex program, which offers the ability to work from anywhere in the US for up to four weeks per year.

The equal employment opportunity policy of the GEICO Companies provides for a fair and equal employment opportunity for all associates and job applicants regardless of race, color, religious