Forward Deployed Data Scientist - Oil & Gas, Houston
At a glance
Mid-level Data Science role at Fundamental. Houston, Texas, United States · full-time · no salary stated · we estimate $116,263–$174,915 across the United States.
Fundamental has not published a salary for this role. The figure below is our estimate, not theirs.
dataroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Put data science use cases into production and show business impact against existing approaches or new opportunities
- Build fair comparisons with client models, handling data preparation, feature creation and validation
- Turn customer operating problems and unusual data patterns into guidance for research and product teams
- Choose suitable business problems, guard against data leakage and handle deployment into restricted environments
- Coordinate with sales and solution architects, aligning stakeholders and explaining model predictions to business users
What you bring
- A PhD or master’s in computer science, math or statistics, or equivalent statistical depth
- At least three years as an individual technical contributor in data science, machine learning or a related discipline
- Hands-on customer or business stakeholder work, plus experience with Docker, orchestration and performant APIs
- You can manage the modeling pipeline from problem framing and data preparation through algorithms and validation
- You have optimized models for a business need and can explain technical architecture in terms of business value
Who this fits
This role suits a hands-on individual contributor comfortable working directly with enterprise customers and coordinating across technical and business stakeholders. The initial customer focus is Houston-based oil and gas; the role also involves production deployments, including restricted client environments.
From the employer
About Fundamental
Fundamental is an AI research lab pioneering the future of enterprise decision-making. Our flagship model, NEXUS is the world's most powerful Large Tabular Model (LTM) - purpose-built for the structured records that contain trillions of dollars in business value. With $275m in funding from leading investors and trusted by Fortune 100 companies, Fundamental is giving businesses the Power to Predict.
At Fundamental, you'll work on unprecedented technical challenges in foundation model development and build technology that transforms how the world's largest companies make decisions. This is your opportunity to be part of a category-defining company from the ground-up. Join the team defining the future of enterprise AI.
About the role
Fundamental is seeking a Forward Deployed Data Scientist - Oil & Gas, Houston to facilitate the adoption of NEXUS and collaborate with customers to address complex technical challenges with an initial focus on Houston-based Oil & Gas customers.
The Data Scientist is an integral part of our FDE team, which is dedicated to driving the successful deployment of Fundamental products and proving value over legacy baselines or net new use cases. They work hand-in-hand with customers from the Proof of Value stage to post-implementation, ensuring our solutions run securely in the client's production heartbeat.
In this role, you’ll manage customer relations involving multiple stakeholders (IT, C-suite, and data science teams) and function as a key bridge, translating field insights into our product roadmap.
Key responsibilities
You'll individually help deploy into production use cases with considerable business impact, moving from "science experiments" to definitive ROI
You’ll work on rigorous head-to-head benchmarking against client baselines (XGBoost, LightGBM), executing the work of data engineering, feature engineering, and validation
You’ll work in collaboration with our research and product teams to translate operational pain points and data anomalies into essential inputs for the Fundamental roadmap
You’ll be involved in technical strategy to identify the right business problems, prevent data leakage, and handle the "last mile" integration (VPC, on-prem, air-gapped)
Your collaboration with the Sales and Solution Architect teams will help align diverse stakeholders and explain predictions to business users
Must have
You hold a PhD / master in CS / Math / Stats or you have equivalent deep statistical literacy
You have 3+ years as a technical individual contributor in Data Science, Machine Learning, Applied Science, or ML Engineering
You have strong experience working directly with customers or business stakeholders, ideally in complex enterprise or industrial environments
You have experience with containerization (Docker), orchestration, and writing performant APIs (FastAPI/Flask)
You master the end-to-end pipeline, from framing, pre-processing, ml algorithm and validation strategies
You have a deep understanding of data handling (PySpark, Pandas) and memory optimization
You have demonstrated experience optimizing models for a specific business problem
You hold strong communication skills with an ability to translate architectural nuances into clear business value
Nice to have
Experience with PyTorch and cloud-native ML pipelines (AWS, GCP, Azure)
Prior experience or understanding of Oil & Gas, energy, utilities, industrials, logistics, or heavy asset environments
Experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Staff Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, or Staff Data Scientist
Industry-based subject matter expertise
Benefits
Competitive compensation with salary and equity
Comprehensive health coverage for you and your dependents, including medical, dental, vision, and 401K
Paid parental leave for all new parents, inclusive of adoptive and surrogate journeys
Relocation support for employees moving to join the team in one of our office locations
A mission-driven, low-ego culture that values diversity of thought, ownership, and bias toward action
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