Lead Data Scientist (Founding Team)

Overview

The Mission That Moves Us:

Tensor Planet keeps commercial fleets on the road by predicting failures weeks before they happen. We fuse telematics, sensor streams and repair logs with AI to cut breakdowns, lower repair costs and extend vehicle life across the $20B US market.

*What You Will Do: *

• Shape the data science practice: Help shape our ML roadmap and drive outcomes to improve uptime and minimize false positive alerts.
• Engineer robust pipelines: Design ETL pipelines to ingest terabytes of IOT data from diverse vehicle systems. Collaborate with engineering to productionize models.
• Innovate with ML and Generative AI: Build ML algorithms and LLM-based conversational intelligence to power copilots for fleet managers and vehicle technicians.
• Embed domain expertise: Translate vehicle mechanics knowledge into high-value features. Partner with product teams to ground models in real-world behavior.
• Mentor a high-performing team: Grow and coach a data science team. Establish best practices for model monitoring, explainability, and reproducibility.

Challenges You Will Tackle:

• Sensor Fusion Complexity: Integrating high-frequency CAN-bus streams with third-party IoT feeds, historical maintenance logs and real-world context.
• Scale & Latency: Delivering real-time predictions across hundreds of vehicles with minimal false positives.
• Regulatory & Safety Constraints: Ensuring models comply with industry standards and support safety-critical decision-making.

Who You Are:

• Experience: 7+ years in data science with at least 3 years in vehicle telematics, Industrial IoT, or automotive diagnostics.
• Technical Skills: Expert in Python, ML, SQL/NoSQL and data streaming platforms, deployment workflows - containerization, CI/CD, model tracking and observability.
• Vehicle Expertise: Deep familiarity with CAN-bus protocols (J1939, OBD-II), telematics standards, and core vehicle systems like engine, transmission, and exhaust.
• Leadership & Communication: Proven track record mentoring teams, delivering production ML models, and translating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Startup DNA: You thrive on ambiguity, unafraid to roll up your sleeves, experiment boldly and learn quickly from failed runs.

What’s In It For You?

• Ownership & Impact: Lead data science teams; your work will directly power multimillion-dollar savings for customers.
• Work at the AI Frontier: Innovate with LLMs and real-time ML pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI, while making it useful and understandable.
• Compensation & Incentives: Benefit from competitive salaries and ESOPs.

Who Are We?

Tensor Planet is a fast-growing startup backed by a NYC-based venture accelerator. We’re helping customers across the US cut fleet breakdowns, lower repair costs and extend asset life.

What’s Our Culture?

We dream big, move with urgency, learn from failures, and thrive on collaboration. We value transparency, curiosity and the right attitude.
Tensor Planet is an equal-opportunity employer building a team as diverse as the fleets we serve.

*Come Join Our Team! *

If you care about solving real-world problems at scale and enjoy working with complex data, join us now. Be a part of our growth story and scale with us: careers@tensorplanet.com.