Director of Data Science

Mastercard is seeking a Director of Data Science (AdTech) for its Commerce Media platform in Boston, MA. This role provides critical technical and strategic leadership for all data science, machine learning, and advanced analytics initiatives. You will own the vision, execution, and evolution of data-driven decision-making across advertising products, encompassing modeling, targeting, optimization, measurement, experimentation, and AI-powered insights.

The ideal candidate possesses deep expertise in applied data science within the advertising ecosystem, a strong theoretical understanding of machine learning and statistical modeling, and a proven ability to lead cross-functional data science initiatives involving engineering, product, business, and platform teams. You will translate complex business challenges into scalable, production-ready data science solutions that deliver measurable impact.

Key responsibilities include:

• Defining and executing the data science and machine learning strategy for Commerce Media, aligning with business objectives and technical direction.
• Leading the design, development, and deployment of ML models for advertising use cases such as targeting, bidding, ranking, forecasting, and attribution.
• Serving as the technical authority on data science methodologies, modeling approaches, experimentation frameworks, and evaluation metrics.
• Driving cross-team data science initiatives in collaboration with Engineering, Product, Architecture, and Business teams.
• Translating ambiguous business problems into well-defined analytical and modeling approaches.
• Establishing and maintaining best practices for the entire model lifecycle.
• Leading and evolving experimentation and measurement frameworks to quantify business impact.
• Championing AI-first development practices and responsibly integrating AI/ML tooling.
• Mentoring and developing senior data scientists.
• Communicating complex findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Partnering with platform engineering to build scalable, production ML systems for high-throughput, real-time environments.
• Ensuring data privacy, security, and ethical AI principles are integrated into all solutions.

The ideal candidate profile includes:

• Deep expertise in applied data science and machine learning within advertising, ad tech, or media platforms.
• Strong foundation in machine learning theory and statistical modeling, with practical application experience.
• Proven leadership in driving complex, cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong judgment in balancing innovation with rigor, scalability, interpretability, and governance.
• Excellent communication skills for conveying technical concepts to diverse audiences.
• A collaborative leadership style emphasizing mentorship and continuous improvement.
• A strong commitment to data privacy, security, and ethical AI practices.
• Experience in senior or leadership roles owning data science initiatives.
• Deep understanding of ML theory and practice, including supervised/unsupervised learning, probabilistic modeling, optimization, and model evaluation.
• Proven experience building and deploying production-grade ML systems.
• Strong background in advertising data science areas like audience modeling, bidding, campaign measurement, and real-time decisioning.
• Demonstrated success leading cross-functional projects.
• Fluency in SQL and programming languages like Python or R.
• Experience with large-scale data platforms (cloud data warehouses, distributed processing).

Mastercard is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. Specific pay ranges for Boston, MA are $196,000 - $323,000 USD. Candidates are encouraged to apply promptly.