Data Science Team Lead

About Darrow

Darrow is on a mission to pursue frictionless justice—using data and AI to uncover large-scale harms and bring justice to the people.

We’re a fast-growing startup of more than 150 team members based in Tel Aviv and New York, backed by world-class investors including Georgian, F2 Venture Capital, Entree Capital, NFX, and Y Combinator.

At Darrow, we build products that turn data into justice. Our platform uncovers legal violations—such as environmental crimes, financial fraud, and privacy breaches—and helps bring legal action to scale. The result is a justice system that works better, faster, and more fairly.

Data Science plays a central role in our mission, combining classical machine learning, large language models (LLMs), and strong human judgment to solve complex, real-world problems.

About the Role:

We are looking for a Data Science Team Lead to lead and grow a talented team working on Darrow’s core data science challenges.

This is a people-first leadership role. Your primary responsibility will be to support, coach, and develop a team of data scientists and an ML engineer, ensuring their well-being, growth, and long-term success. You will set high technical standards, guide problem definition, and help the team consistently choose the right solution for each problem whether that involves LLMs, classical ML, or simpler approaches.

You’ll operate in a fast-paced startup environment, working closely with engineering, research, product, data, and legal stakeholders. While the role includes some hands-on technical involvement, success is measured by team health, decision quality, and sustainable delivery not personal output.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and coach a team of data scientists and an ML engineer.
• Conduct regular 1:1s and support career development and well-being.
• Own technical direction and ensure high-quality ML decision-making.
• Guide problem definition and solution selection (LLMs vs classical ML).
• Establish and maintain ML development processes (reviews, gates, evaluations).
• Balance short-term delivery with long-term model quality.
• Communicate risks early and push back on stakeholders when needed.
• Take full ownership of team execution within 2–3 months.

Requirements:

• At least 3 years of experience managing data scientists, including senior team members.
• At least 5 years of hands-on experience as a Data Scientist or ML Engineer.
• Proven experience leading production-grade ML systems end-to-end, from ideation to deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
• Strong background in applied machine learning, including both LLM-based systems and classical ML approaches.
• Experience working in fast-paced startup environments.
• Strong communication skills and a people-first leadership mindset.
• Fluent English, spoken and written.
• MSc in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a closely related quantitative field.

Advantages:

• Experience building or scaling a data science team.
• Experience designing ML processes from idea to production.
• Experience working with high-stakes or domain-heavy problems.
• Experience collaborating with legal, compliance, or research teams.