Director Data Science Startup Jobs in Michigan (NOW HIRING)

Job Summary:
May Mobility is transforming cities through autonomous technology to create a safer, greener, more accessible world. The Director, Data Science will lead the team responsible for turning data generated by the fleet into insights that enhance the safety and efficiency of their autonomous services while collaborating with various departments to set standards and translate operational data into actionable strategies.
Responsibilities:
• Set and own the data science strategy across simulation and synthetic data, ML evaluation (perception, prediction, planning), fleet operations analytics, and the data platform that supports them; translate that strategy into a 12–24 month roadmap with measurable milestones.
• Lead, grow, and develop a team of senior data scientists, ML engineers, and front-line managers; recruit from a small expert pool, calibrate the bar, and build a hiring brand that allows May Mobility to win against AV, robotics, and AI competitors.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, Safety, and Operations leaders to define release criteria, performance metrics, and ODD-expansion gates; use data to make the business case for what we deploy, where, and when.
• Drive ML and analytics applications end-to-end: dataset curation, scenario coverage, modeling, offboard evaluation, productionization, and continuous monitoring of fleet performance in the wild.
• Establish measurement and experimentation standards across the company — including before/after analyses for stack changes, A/B-style comparisons in simulation, and statistically credible reporting on real-world incidents.
• Lead team-wide quality activities including design and code reviews; hold the bar on engineering rigor for production data science systems.
• Track and trend technical performance of the autonomy stack in the field; surface root causes, prioritize fixes with engineering, and represent fleet-data findings to executives, regulators, and partners.
• Provide technical guidance to Engineering and Operations leaders on issue diagnosis, resolution, and the ML changes most likely to move our key safety and service metrics.
• Represent May Mobility's data science work externally where appropriate — through publications, conference talks, partner reviews, and recruiting.
Qualifications:
Required:
• 8+ years of industry experience in data science, machine learning, or applied research, with at least 4 years managing senior individual contributors and front-line managers.
• Direct experience leading data science or ML work in at least one of the following domains: autonomous vehicles or ADAS, robotics, large-scale computer vision systems, simulation and synthetic data, reinforcement learning, or large-scale ML platforms.
• Demonstrated track record leading a team of 10 or more through a major delivery — for example, a production launch, a major model rollout, a regulatory milestone, or a significant ODD or product expansion.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, Physics, Robotics, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong programming skills in Python; working familiarity with the production ML stack used in modern AV/robotics environments (e.g., PyTorch or TensorFlow, distributed training, dataset and feature pipelines, experiment tracking).
• Experience setting measurement and experimentation standards inside an engineering or product organization, with credible examples of metrics or evaluation frameworks the team adopted and kept using.
• Experience operating in cross-functional partnership with engineering, product, safety, and operations leaders — comfortable both defending technical positions and adjusting them in light of business or safety constraints.
Preferred:
• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Statistics, EE, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
• Prior experience at an autonomous vehicle, robotics, or hard-tech company that has deployed products to real customers (not only research demos).
• Experience with simulation, synthetic data generation, sim-to-real transfer, or scenario-based evaluation for AV or robotics.
• Familiarity with safety-case construction, ODD definition, or regulator engagement for autonomous systems.
• Publications or conference contributions in top-tier ML, CV, or robotics venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICRA, RSS).
• Experience with C/C++ systems and/or GPU programming sufficient to engage credibly with onboard ML and infrastructure teams.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and grow junior managers and senior individual contributors into bigger roles.
Company:
May Mobility is a manufacturing firm that designs and develops autonomous technology vehicles for self-driving transportation solutions. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, USA, with a team of 201-500 employees. The company is currently Growth Stage.