Lead the development and governance of AI systems at Coupa, driving excellence in model performance and MLOps while mentoring a team of data scientists and ML engineers.
Coupa makes margins multiply through its community-generated AI and industry-leading total spend management platform for businesses large and small. Coupa AI is informed by trillions of dollars of direct and indirect spend data across a global network of 10M+ buyers and suppliers. We empower you with the ability to predict, prescribe, and automate smarter, more profitable business decisions to improve operating margins.
Why join Coupa?
🔹 Pioneering Technology: At Coupa, we're at the forefront of innovation, leveraging the latest technology to empower our customers with greater efficiency and visibility in their spend.
🔹 Collaborative Culture: We value collaboration and teamwork, and our culture is driven by transparency, openness, and a shared commitment to excellence.
🔹 Global Impact: Join a company where your work has a global, measurable impact on our clients, the business, and each other.
Learn more on Life at Coupa blog and hear from our employees about their experiences working at Coupa.
The Impact of a Sr. Director, Data Science at Coupa:
We are seeking a strategic and hands-on Director of AI Data Science to lead the development, deployment, and governance of advanced AI systems across Coupa’s platform. This role sits at the intersection of machine learning, data strategy, and product innovation.
You will define how AI models are built, evaluated, and scaled—driving excellence in model performance, MLOps, and data quality. A key part of your mandate will be establishing robust “golden datasets,” advancing AI observability, and ensuring our systems are accurate, reliable, and responsibly deployed.
This leader will partner closely with Engineering, Product, and Platform teams to embed AI into core business workflows, while setting the standard for responsible and trustworthy AI.
What You’ll Do
- Lead the strategy, design, and delivery of AI/ML models (including Generative AI use cases) across multiple product domains.
- Establish and scale MLOps practices to enable reliable, reproducible, and efficient model development and deployment.
- Define and operationalize golden datasets, including data curation, labeling standards, and evaluation frameworks.
- Own model performance: define KPIs, implement continuous evaluation, and drive ongoing improvements in accuracy, robustness, and latency.
- Build and advance AI observability, monitoring, and feedback loops to ensure model transparency and trust.
- Partner cross-functionally with Engineering, Product, Data, and Platform teams to integrate AI into production systems and user experiences.
- Establish and enforce Responsible AI practices, including fairness, bias mitigation, explainability, and compliance.
- Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing global team of data scientists and ML engineers.
- Influence executive stakeholders by translating complex AI concepts into clear business impact and strategy.
What You Will Bring to Coupa
- 10+ years of experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, or AI, with 3–5+ years in leadership roles managing high-performing teams.
- Strong expertise in machine learning, deep learning, and statistical modeling, with experience in production environments.
- Proven track record of delivering scalable, production-grade AI systems that drive measurable business impact.
- Hands-on experience with modern MLOps ecosystems (e.g., SageMaker, Vertex AI, Databricks, Kubeflow, MLflow).
- Deep experience with data strategy, including dataset creation, labeling, governance, and evaluation methodologies.
- Familiarity with Generative AI / LLMs, prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and evaluation techniques.
- Strong programming skills in Python and experience with frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar.
- Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field (PhD preferred).
The estimated pay range for this role is $222,000 - $310,000
The starting salary for the successful candidate will be based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location.
Coupa complies with relevant laws and regulations regarding equal opportunity and offers a welcoming and inclusive work environment. Decisions related to hiring, compensation, training, or evaluating performance are made fairly, and we provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified candidates and employees.
Please be advised that inquiries or resumes from recruiters will not be accepted.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have read Coupa’s Privacy Policy and understand that Coupa receives/collects your application, including your personal data, for the purposes of managing Coupa's ongoing recruitment and placement activities, including for employment purposes in the event of a successful application and for notification of future job opportunities if you did not succeed the first time. You will find more details about how your application is processed, the purposes of processing, and how long we retain your application in our Privacy Policy.
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