Top Hat is transforming higher education by making learning more personal, engaging, and effective. We bring together interactive content, assessment, and analytics to spark better teaching and learning for a brighter world. As we continue to build our AI-first future, personalized learning experiences powered by cutting-edge data science, our Data team plays a pivotal role in shaping that vision.
The Opportunity
We are seeking a Manager, Data Science to lead a team of talented data scientists in developing evidence-driven insights, predictive models, and AI-powered personalization features that directly impact millions of students and thousands of professors.
You will be instrumental in:
- Delivering AI and analytics solutions that improve learning outcomes (e.g., withdrawal-rate reduction, mastery-based personalization, agentic AI).
- Driving the next generation of personalization across our products (Ace Practice, Study Planner, Recommendations, etc.).
- Building a strong partnership with Product Development, and Learning teams to ship data-driven features at scale.
- Cultivating a culture of curiosity, rigor, and measurable impact within your team.
You will:
- Lead & Develop the Team: Coach, mentor, and grow a team of data scientists. Foster technical excellence and career development.
- Advance AI-First Capabilities: Contribute to the design of agentic AI (using Google ADK, Vertex AI), adaptive mastery algorithms, and graph-based knowledge representations.
- Deliver Impactful Models & Insights: Drive roadmap-aligned projects such as learning mastery diagnostics, recommender systems, and A/B experimentation.
- Partner Cross-Functionally: Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Learning Materials, and Customer Success to translate educational goals into actionable AI solutions.
- Ensure Quality & Reliability: Establish standards for experimentation, model governance, bias detection, and reproducibility.
- Tell the Story with Data: Communicate complex technical concepts and evidence-of-impact to leadership and stakeholders.
You are:
- Leadership Experience: 2-4 years managing data scientists or ML engineers; 6-8 years in data science, ML, or applied statistics.
- Technical Depth: Expertise in Python, SQL, ML frameworks (e.g., scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch), and modern cloud data platforms (BigQuery, Spark, etc.). Practical experience with LLM-based applications and agent frameworks (Google ADK, LangChain, etc.).
- Applied ML/AI: Hands-on experience delivering personalization, recommender systems, or predictive analytics in production.
- Business & Product Sense: Ability to translate ambiguous problems into measurable objectives and practical solutions.
- Experimentation Skills: Strong grasp of causal inference, A/B testing, and evidence-based impact measurement.
- Excellent Communication: Proven skill in presenting technical and non-technical stories to executives, educators, and cross-functional peers.
- Passion for education technology and improving student outcomes.
Nice to Have:
- Experience with graph databases (e.g., Neo4j) and knowledge graph-driven personalization.
- Background in education analytics, psychometrics, or learning science.
Why team members love working at Top Hat:
- A noble mission that creates meaningful, fulfilling work
- A team that cares deeply for customers and for each other
- Flexible, remote first work environment
- Professional learning and development for all role levels
- An awesome and welcoming Toronto HQ
- Competitive health benefits that start on day one
- A management team focused on performance, growth, engagement and connection
- Our winning strategy and market potential
- Innovative PTO policy with lots of time and space for self-care
- Passionate customers that believe in us—and what we do
- A chance to work with new tech like generative AI—and see the customer impact
