Senior Applied Scientist, Trust & Safety

$183K - $226K Seattle, WA, US Senior Research Scientist

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Skills & Technologies

Python

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

About DAT

DAT Freight \& Analytics is an award\-winning employer of choice and a next\-generation SaaS technology company that has been at the leading edge of freight and logistics innovation for nearly five decades. Founded in 1978, DAT operates the largest freight marketplace in North America — processing 250 million\+ load posts annually and maintaining one of the largest repositories of freight market transaction data in the world. On a defined path to $1 billion in revenue, DAT deploys a suite of software solutions, machine learning models, and intelligent automation tools that help brokers, carriers, and shippers price freight accurately, source capacity, reduce risk, and operate more efficiently. With nearly 700 teammates across offices in Denver, CO; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; Springfield, MO; Toronto, ON; and Bangalore, India, DAT combines the credibility of a multi\-decade market leader with the drive of a company that is not done disrupting the industry it helped build. For more information, visit www.DAT.com

Job Application Deadline: 06/30/2026

The Opportunity

DAT's Trust and Safety Science team is seeking a Senior Applied Scientist to design and deploy the next generation of risk models and intelligent decision systems that help detect, prevent, and mitigate unsafe, fraudulent, or otherwise harmful behavior across our network. This role sits at the intersection of machine learning, risk decisioning, and product development, with a focus on building systems that protect customers and the marketplace while preserving healthy marketplace activity.

You will work on some of the most important trust and safety problems in digital logistics, including onboarding risk, behavioral risk detection, fraud and abuse detection, account integrity, network\-graph risk modeling, and continuous monitoring throughout the customer lifecycle.

This is a hands\-on, end\-to\-end science role where you will:

  • Conceptualize, propose, implement, and iterate on models and algorithms for fraud detection, risk scoring, and trust and safety decisioning.
  • Build decision engines that learn from feedback and support actions such as step\-up verification, review prioritization, and automated access controls.
  • Apply machine learning, graph and network algorithms, anomaly detection, and other quantitative methods to deliver measurable improvements in fraud prevention and operational effectiveness.
  • Take ideas from research to production, ensuring the solutions you build integrate cleanly into operational and product systems.

You will be joining at a pivotal point in DAT's transformation as we automate more of the freight lifecycle and build the safest, most efficient automated marketplace in the freight industry. DAT has also accumulated a uniquely rich set of behavioral, operational, and risk data across its platforms (Convoy Platform, TruckerTools, OutGo, DAT), that enables a strong foundation for behavior\-drift modeling, account and identity abuse detection, and broader threat detection systems. A key part of the opportunity is extending Convoy Platform's industry\-leading CARVE product across the broader DAT ecosystem and evolving them into customer\-facing risk products for a wider set of DAT customers.

This is a deeply technical role focused on building and productionizing high\-recall risk models and decision systems for high\-stakes compliance and trust workflows, where protecting customers, minimizing missed risk, and making decisions that are measurable, explainable, and operationally defensible all matter. Just as importantly, these systems must act like a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer: in a fair marketplace, we need to target true risk precisely, avoid unnecessary friction for legitimate participants, and make nuanced decisions that balance recall, precision, customer protection, and marketplace health.

What You'll Do

  • Build and productionize fraud, safety, and risk systems for high\-recall decisioning, with controls that preserve precision, fairness, and explainability in high\-stakes workflows.
  • Design graph, network\-link analysis, entity\-resolution, and anomaly\-detection algorithms that identify hidden relationships, behavioral drift, account abuse, and emerging threat patterns across users, carriers, digital fingerprints and physical assets.
  • Develop continuous risk monitoring, alerting, and policy decisioning across onboarding, booking, and load execution, combining ML models, heuristics, feedback loops, and human\-in\-the\-loop review where appropriate.
  • Move proactively and with urgency against evolving fraud patterns, rapidly iterating on approaches while building scalable, adaptable detection and decisioning systems rather than brittle one\-off patches or manual hacks.

The Skills and Experience You'll Bring

  • PhD or MS in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, Engineering, or another quantitative field.
  • 5\+ years of experience developing and deploying machine learning, statistical, or decisioning solutions in production environments, with strong proficiency in Python and modern ML tooling and hands\-on experience building reliable, production\-quality data and model workflows.
  • Ability to develop algorithmic solutions and decision systems while maintaining explainability, interpretability, and defensibility in high\-stakes risk and compliance workflows.
  • Experience owning a model, service, API, or pipeline end\-to\-end, including quality, monitoring, iteration, and cross\-functional coordination, with strong communication and collaboration skills to work effectively with technical and non\-technical partners and bring models into production.
  • Demonstrated ability to frame ambiguous business problems as scalable automated decision systems and deliver practical solutions with measurable impact.
  • Experience in one or more of the following areas: fraud detection, trust and safety, risk modeling, anomaly detection, rare\-event modeling, identity or abuse detection, graph or network analysis, or related decision systems.

Bonus Skills

  • You have worked on systems that combine models, heuristics, human review, and operational workflows to make high\-stakes decisions.
  • You have experience with two\-sided marketplaces, pricing, financial markets, or economic systems.
  • You have experience in freight, logistics, transportation technology, or adjacent operational domains.

Why DAT?

DAT is an award winning employer of choice.

For starters, we have a hybrid work environment, but we also know what makes a great workplace. We have a time\-tested and resolute set of operating values predicated on integrity, mutual respect, open communication, and executing with excellence. These values inform our strategic vision as much as any one of our products does. We've been an employer of choice in the Portland metropolitan area for four decades, and within one year of opening our Denver office, DAT was \#26 on Built In Colorado's 100 Best Places to Work In Colorado.

  • Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, and AD\&D insurance
  • Parental Leave
  • Flexible Vacation Time (FVT)
  • An additional 10 holidays of paid time off per calendar year
  • 401k matching (immediately vested)
  • Employee Stock Purchase Plan
  • Short\- and Long\-term disability sick leave
  • Flexible Spending Accounts
  • Health Savings Accounts
  • Employee Assistance Program
  • Additional programs \- Employee Referral, Internal Recognition, and Wellness
  • Free TriMet transit pass (Beaverton Office)
  • Competitive salary and benefits package
  • Work on impactful projects in a cutting\-edge environment
  • Collaborative and supportive team culture
  • Opportunity to make a real difference in the trucking industry
  • Employee Resource Groups

*\*This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship\*\**

*For Washington\-based candidates, in compliance with the Washington State Pay Transparency Law, the salary range for this role is $183,000\.00 \- $226,000\.00 \+ target bonus. DAT considers factors such as scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate's work experience, education and training, core skills, internal equity, and market and business elements when extending an offer.*

DAT embraces the value of a diverse workforce, and believes it is a core strength of our company that we encourage those values in every DAT employee, at every level of our organization, regardless of tenure or rank. We provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60\-1\.35(c)

\#LI\-RF1

\#LI\-hybrid

Salary Context

This $183K-$226K range is above the median for Research Scientist roles in our dataset (median: $183K across 109 roles with salary data).

Role Details

Company DAT Solutions
Title Senior Applied Scientist, Trust & Safety
Location Seattle, WA, US
Category Research Scientist
Experience Senior
Salary $183K - $226K
Remote No

About This Role

Research Scientists push the boundaries of what AI can do. They design experiments, develop novel architectures, publish papers, and translate research breakthroughs into production capabilities. This is where the fundamental advances happen, from attention mechanisms to diffusion models to reasoning chains.

The work is intellectually demanding and often ambiguous. You might spend months on an approach that doesn't pan out. The best research scientists combine deep mathematical intuition with engineering pragmatism. They know when to go deep on theory and when to run experiments. They read papers voraciously and can spot incremental contributions from genuine breakthroughs.

Across the 3,823 AI roles we're tracking, Research Scientist positions make up 3% of the market. At DAT Solutions, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.

Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.

What the Work Looks Like

A typical week includes: reading and discussing recent papers with your team, designing and running experiments on multi-GPU clusters, analyzing results and iterating on hypotheses, writing up findings for internal review or publication, and collaborating with engineering teams to productionize promising results. The ratio of thinking to coding is higher than in engineering roles.

Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.

Skills Required

Python (52% of roles)

PhD strongly preferred for most roles. Deep expertise in a specific area (NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, multimodal) is expected. PyTorch is the standard. Publication track record matters. Strong mathematical foundations in linear algebra, probability, optimization, and information theory are assumed.

Beyond the fundamentals, companies value experience with large-scale distributed training, novel architecture design, and the ability to bridge theory and practice. Understanding of current frontier topics (reasoning, multimodal, long-context, alignment) is essential. Code quality matters more than many researchers expect. Labs want researchers who can implement their ideas cleanly.

Strong research postings specify the research area, mention the team you'd join, and describe the problems they're working on. They often list recent publications from the team. Vague 'AI research' postings without specifics usually mean the company wants to sound impressive but doesn't have a real research agenda.

Compensation Benchmarks

Research Scientist roles pay a median of $223,400 based on 280 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($204K) sits 8% below the category median. Disclosed range: $183K to $226K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,100. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,500. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($275,000) and AI Safety ($274,200). By seniority level: Entry: $97,880; Mid: $165,000; Senior: $227,400; Director: $247,800; VP: $250,000.

DAT Solutions AI Hiring

DAT Solutions has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across Research Scientist. Based in Seattle, WA, US. Compensation range: $226K - $226K.

Location Context

AI roles in Seattle pay a median of $227,400 across 1,084 tracked positions. That's 14% above the national median.

Career Path

Common paths into Research Scientist roles include PhD Student, Research Engineer, Postdoc.

From here, career progression typically leads toward Research Lead, Distinguished Scientist, VP of Research.

The PhD is the entry point for most paths. Choose your advisor and research area carefully since they'll define your first industry position. Publish consistently, contribute to open-source projects in your area, and build relationships at conferences. Industry research offers better compensation and compute resources than academia, but the pressure to show product impact is real.

What to Expect in Interviews

Research interviews are multi-stage: a research talk (present your best paper), technical deep-dives on your methodology, and often a 'research proposal' exercise where you design an experiment to test a hypothesis. Coding rounds test implementation ability alongside theoretical knowledge. Be prepared to implement a paper from scratch and discuss the design choices the authors made. Strong candidates can critique papers constructively and identify gaps in experimental methodology.

When evaluating opportunities: Strong research postings specify the research area, mention the team you'd join, and describe the problems they're working on. They often list recent publications from the team. Vague 'AI research' postings without specifics usually mean the company wants to sound impressive but doesn't have a real research agenda.

AI Hiring Overview

The AI job market has 3,823 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 112 entry-level, 1,798 mid-level, 1,516 senior, and 397 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (590 positions). The remaining 3,217 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $200,100. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,500. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($275,000 median, 41 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 55 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 434 roles).

Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.

The AI Job Market Today

The AI job market spans 3,823 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,629), Data Scientist (322), AI Software Engineer (279). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.

The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (112) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,798) and senior (1,516) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 397 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (590 positions), with 3,217 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.

AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $200,100. Top-quartile roles start at $253,500, and the 90th percentile reaches $307,500. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.

Category matters for compensation. AI Engineering Manager roles lead at $275,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.

The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,979 postings), Aws (1,190 postings), Azure (899 postings), Rag (839 postings), Gcp (726 postings), Pytorch (595 postings), Prompt Engineering (595 postings), Claude (540 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Based on 280 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for Research Scientist positions is $223,400. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
PhD strongly preferred for most roles. Deep expertise in a specific area (NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, multimodal) is expected. PyTorch is the standard. Publication track record matters. Strong mathematical foundations in linear algebra, probability, optimization, and information theory are assumed.
About 15% of the 3,823 AI roles we track offer remote work. Remote availability varies by company and seniority level, with senior and leadership roles more likely to offer location flexibility.
DAT Solutions is among the companies actively hiring for AI and ML talent. Check our company profiles for detailed breakdowns of open roles, salary ranges, and hiring trends.
Common next steps from Research Scientist positions include Research Lead, Distinguished Scientist, VP of Research. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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