Senior Actuarial Data Scientist

Title: Senior Actuarial Data Scientist

• Location: Newport Beach, CA, or Remote, United States

Remote

Pacific Life is investing in bright, agile and diverse new talent to ensure we continue to innovate and strengthen relationships with our policyholders. That’s why we’re actively seeking a talented Senior Data Scientist to join our team and take part in our people-first culture.

As a Senior Data Scientist, you’ll play a key role in Pacific Life’s growth and long-term success by providing model driven insights to business partners such as Actuarial sciences, Compliance, Operations, IT, Sales and Marketing in a Do/Partner/Support model. If you’re experienced in Data Science and have managed projects with business partners to deliver insights through rapid hypothesis testing, you’re a great fit for this role. Technical capabilities aside, if you’re a mission-driven self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced, collaborative culture, you’re a perfect fit for Pacific Life.

While joining... the Advanced Analytics team, you’ll ensure maximum business impact with analysis that guides strategic decisions for the business. Currently, our profitable team is working on several exciting projects with our business partners. We are employing Machine Learning, unstructured data, and cutting-edge data structures, while also working to drive ROI through more tried and true methods including General Linear Models, clustering and decision tree-based methods. We also have a heavy emphasis on empowering all functions to build models and perform analysis themselves through our Community of Practice.

Reporting to the Director of Advanced Analytics, the ideal candidate will be able to work with business units to understand their needs and hypothesize on potential analytical solutions. He or she will work independently to identify data sources internally as well as externally for the solutioning process. This will also include being able to clean and blend data as needed for analysis further downstream in the predictive and prescriptive analytics stack. This individual will also perform complex analytical modeling using pre-built machine learning algorithms, as well as building custom algorithms. The end goal is to create actionable insights that will be implemented in the market to drive quantifiable market value.

We believe you should be given the time, space, and trust to do your best work – your way. As part of our transition toward a more digitally oriented, inclusive and employee-focused company, we’re opening this role to candidates near [Newport Beach, CA; Omaha NE or Lynchburg, VA] as well as those looking to work 100% remote.

Key Responsibilities:

Modeling and Hands-on Analytics (50%): This will involve opportunities to choose the right model to run to get the insights that will be used for the business use case. Models include time series, clustering, statistics and more advanced methods. The models can be pre-built or custom based on the level of precision needed for the outcome. The foresight to envisage and capture metrics related to eventual “value provided” is expected to be included in model design.

Client engagement (25%): Our models touch on client engagements with Quantitative actuarial sciences, Compliance, Sales, Marketing and other business partners. The Senior data scientist will work with the business partners to frame “the right question to ask”. The scope of client engagement will include managing the analytics project life cycle from initiation, problem framing, insight capture/delivery, operationalization and value capture.

Analytics Practice Research and advancement (25%): The Senior data scientist will have an opportunity to be an ambassador for the Advanced Analytics team by spreading analytics knowledge, tools and processes to partner organizations. He/she will opine on and participate in rapidly sourcing, testing, discarding or implement new technologies in the analytics space.

Factors for Success

• Proficiency in statistical analysis, quantitative analytics, forecasting/predictive analytics, multivariate testing, and optimization algorithms
• Experience working directly with business partners to provide solutions to complex problems by delivering bespoke advanced models
• Technical skills in modeling (AI/machine learning, H2O driverless AI, R and/or Python), data processing (Alteryx, Tableau Prep, SQL and/or Knime) and visualization (Tableau and/or Power BI)
• Ability to work within an “Agile” methodology mindset – to be both fast paced and process-oriented.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills that align with the people-first culture at PL
• 8+ years of experience, including 5+ years in statistical modelling and analysis
• Undergraduate Degree in Engineering, Mathematics or Statistics, or similar quantitatively intensive curriculum

Advantageous for candidacy

• Experience in Life Insurance and Retirement industry with an actuarial bent
• ASA/FSA designation or progress towards one
• Business related Masters’ degree

How We Help You Succeed:

We’re fostering a culture of shared values across our company by providing generous compensation and comprehensive benefits that allow our employees to find fulfillment and security in personal life and career alike. These include:

• Competitive Salary and Benefits
• Work-Life Balance & Flexible Scheduling
• Medical, dental, and vision as part our commitment to investing in the health and wellbeing of our employees
• Two retirement savings plans: 401k savings plan with company match and Company Retirement Contribution (company-paid)
• Generous PTO and holiday pay
• Warm Colleagues & Inspiring Culture

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