Senior Director - Data Science

Company Description

About Freshworks

Organizations everywhere struggle under the crushing costs and complexities of “solutions” that promise to simplify their lives. To create a better experience for their customers and employees. To help them grow. Software is a choice that can make or break a business. Create better or worse experiences. Propel or throttle growth. Business software has become a blocker instead of ways to get work done.

There’s another option. Freshworks. With a fresh vision for how the world works.

At Freshworks, we build uncomplicated service software that delivers exceptional customer and employee experiences. Our enterprise-grade solutions are powerful, yet easy to use, and quick to deliver results. Our people-first approach to AI eliminates friction, making employees more effective and organizations more productive. Over 72,000 companies, including Bridgestone, New Balance, Nucor, S&P Global, and Sony Music, trust Freshworks’ customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) software to fuel customer loyalty and service efficiency. And over 4,500 Freshworks employees make this possible, all around the world.

Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

Job Description

Function: Engineering AI
Reports To: VP - Engineering AI
Team Size: 20 to 40 (Data Scientists, ML Engineers, Software Engineers)

We are looking for a Senior Director – Engineering AI to lead the charter for machine learning, and GenAI initiatives across Freshworks’ platform. This leader will be responsible for defining the AI vision, leading high-impact cross-functional programs, embedding intelligence into our product suite, and scaling a world-class data science function globally.

You’ll operate at the intersection of business, product, and technology — steering the strategic use of AI to solve customer problems, improve operational efficiency, and drive revenue growth.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Vision

• Define and own the AI roadmap aligned with company objectives.
• Drive the long-term strategy for AI/ML initiatives, and data monetization opportunities.
• Evangelize a culture of experimentation, evidence-based decision-making, and responsible AI.

Team Leadership

• Hire, mentor, and develop a world-class team of data scientists, machine learning and engineers.
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and high-impact environment with a strong learning and delivery mindset.

Cross-functional Leadership

• Partner closely with Engineering and Product teams to embed ML models into products and services.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across business functions to identify and prioritize use cases for AI.

Technical Execution

• Oversee development and deployment of scalable ML models, statistical models, NLP solutions, and recommendation engines.
• Ensure rigorous experimentation and model validation using state-of-the-art techniques.
• Champion data governance, quality, and security practices.

Metrics & Impact

• Define KPIs and success metrics for data science initiatives.
• Deliver measurable impact on revenue growth, operational efficiency, and customer experience.

Qualifications

Professional Experience

• 12–18 years of experience in AI, with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles managing large data science teams.
• Proven experience delivering ML-based products and solutions in a SaaS or digital platform environment.
• Demonstrated ability to influence product roadmaps and drive AI strategy in large-scale environments.

Technical Expertise

• Deep understanding of applied machine learning, NLP, deep learning, causal inference, optimization, and GenAI (LLMs, embeddings, retrieval pipelines).
• Strong hands-on foundation in Python, SQL, Spark, and ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn.
• Familiarity with modern cloud data stacks (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, AWS Sagemaker, Vertex AI, LangChain/RAG pipelines).
• Drive operational efficiency and engineering productivity across AI and data platform teams through streamlined processes, tooling, and automation.
• Establish and enforce standardized practices for data engineering, model development, and deployment across teams to ensure consistency, quality, and reuse.
• Champion platform-first thinking—building reusable components, shared services, and self-service capabilities to accelerate experimentation and delivery.
• Experience with production-grade ML deployment, experimentation, and performance tracking.

Leadership & Influence

• Strong executive presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Sales, and Marketing.
• Effective communication of complex technical concepts to diverse audiences including C-suite, product managers, and non-technical partners.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives to optimize end-to-end ML workflows, from data ingestion to model monitoring, reducing cycle times and increasing model velocity.
• Partner with engineering, product, and infrastructure teams to align roadmaps and eliminate friction in building, testing, and deploying AI solutions at scale.
• Passionate about building a data-driven culture and driving talent development across the organization.

Nice to Have

• Experience in customer experience, CRM, service management, or sales tech domains.
• Hands-on exposure to LLM fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and GenAI application development.
• Hands-on experience developing and scaling ML pipelines and models using Databricks and related tools (e.g., MLflow,). etc
• Participation in AI ethics or responsible AI governance efforts.
• Open-source contributions or published research in relevant domains.

Why Join Freshworks

• Shape the AI-first future of one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies globally.
• Build and ship data-driven solutions at scale, impacting 60,000+ businesses.
• Work with a global leadership team that values innovation, autonomy, and customer-centricity.

Additional Information

At Freshworks, we are creating a global workplace that enables everyone to find their true potential, purpose, and passion irrespective of their background, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. We are committed to providing equal opportunity for all and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant, richer work environment that advances the goals of our employees, communities and the business.