[Hiring] Director of Data Science @Destination Pet, LLC

Role Description

Destination Pet is launching a new, PE-backed business unit focused on building a differentiated data platform for the pet health and pet services ecosystem. We are seeking a Director of Data Science to help build the analytical foundation of this business from the ground up. This is a unique opportunity for someone who wants to operate in a newly formed, high-growth business while benefiting from the backing, scale, and resources of an established, private-equity-backed platform.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on data science leader who can work with complex and fragmented data, build commercially valuable insights, and help turn pet health and pet care data into scalable products.

Core Responsibilities

• Help define and build the data science strategy for a newly formed pet health data business unit.
• Analyze large, complex, and multi-source datasets related to pet health, veterinary care, pet services, customer behavior, and service utilization.
• Build predictive models, segmentation models, forecasting tools, and other analytical solutions to identify trends, patterns, and commercial opportunities.
• Partner with product, technology, commercial, operations, and executive stakeholders to identify data products and insights that can be monetized.
• Support the development of data products that may be sold to external customers, partners, or industry stakeholders.
• Work with internal and external data sources, including veterinary partners, pet care centers, customer systems, and third-party datasets.
• Lead cross-functional efforts in data cleaning, normalization, deduplication, taxonomy creation, and quality control to ensure data integrity and support ongoing monitoring.
• Translate complex analytical findings into clear, actionable insights for non-technical audiences.
• Help establish best practices for responsible data use, privacy, governance, de-identification, and data quality.
• Operate comfortably in an entrepreneurial environment where business models are still being developed.
• Drive the creation of novel, statistically differentiated predictive models, supported by a strong track record in research and data science.
• Help shape the future structure, tools, and capabilities of the data science function as the business scales.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, Economics, Bioinformatics, or a related quantitative field.
• 6-10+ years of experience in data science, advanced analytics, machine learning, statistical modeling, or a related quantitative role.
• Strong proficiency in Python and/or R.
• Strong SQL skills and experience working with relational databases and large datasets.
• Experience working with messy, fragmented, or multi-source data and turning it into usable analytical assets.
• Demonstrated experience building predictive models, segmentation frameworks, forecasting models, machine learning models, or other advanced analytical solutions.
• Strong understanding of data quality, feature engineering, statistical inference, experimentation, model validation, and analytical best practices.
• Ability to communicate complex analysis clearly to executive, commercial, product, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfort working in a newly formed business, startup-like environment, or high-growth setting with ambiguity and evolving priorities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree or PhD in a quantitative discipline.
• Experience in a newly formed company, startup, venture-backed company, PE-backed company, or corporate incubation environment.
• Experience building data products, commercial analytics products, data platforms, data marketplaces, or monetizable insight products.
• Experience in healthcare, veterinary medicine, pet care, life sciences, insurance, consumer health, retail, marketplace businesses, or multi-site services.
• Experience working with regulated, sensitive, privacy-conscious, or consumer data environments.
• Familiarity with privacy-preserving analytics, de-identification, aggregation, consent frameworks, and responsible data-use practices.
• Experience with cloud data platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, GCP, Azure, or similar.
• Experience with BI and visualization tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Looker, Sigma, or similar.
• Experience partnering with product, engineering, commercial, legal, operations, and executive teams.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Builder mindset with the ability to create structure in an early-stage environment.
• Commercially curious and interested in turning data into revenue-generating products.
• Comfortable working hands-on while also helping define strategy and future team capabilities.
• Strong business judgment and ability to prioritize the highest-value analytical opportunities.
• Comfortable operating in a PE-backed environment with a focus on speed, accountability, value creation, and measurable outcomes.
• Able to work independently in a fully remote environment while collaborating effectively across functions.
• Passionate about the opportunity to transform pet health and pet care data into meaningful insights.

Skills

• Data science and machine learning
• Predictive modeling and statistical analysis
• SQL, Python, and/or R
• Data cleaning, normalization, and quality control
• Data product development
• Commercial analytics and data monetization
• Executive-level storytelling and insight presentation
• Privacy-aware and ethical data use
• Cloud data platforms
• Startup, new business unit, or PE-backed operating experience
• Cross-functional collaboration

Benefits

• Health, vision, dental, long & short-term disability, and life insurance
• A startup mentality company with stable funding
• 401k match
• Pet care discounts
• Flexible time off
• Opportunity to grow your career with a network of like-minded professionals