Data Scientist, Principal

About the role: We’re looking for a strategically minded and AI‑expert Principal Data Scientist to design and elevate how Blackbaud delivers decision intelligence at enterprise scale. In this role, you will combine strategic thinking with deep AI expertise to transform how predictive models, business logic, and generative AI come together into trusted, production‑ready intelligence. You’ll partner across data, platform, and business teams to shape how decisions are generated, explained, and governed—fueling responsible, AI‑powered solutions that help organizations move faster with confidence. This role plays a critical leadership role in Blackbaud’s evolution into an AI‑native company, advancing how intelligence is embedded into products and decision workflows. What you'll do Lead the design of enterprise decision intelligence systems that combine predictive models, business rules, and generative AI into clear, actionable outputs Establish scalable decision modeling patterns that support recommendations, prioritization, risk scoring, anomaly detection, and summarization across the business Define how contextual data is transformed into decision‑ready intelligence that is interpretable, explainable, and aligned to enterprise meaning Guide the development of production‑grade machine learning and generative AI solutions, ensuring outputs are grounded, testable, and reliable Build and evolve evaluation frameworks that measure decision quality, including accuracy, calibration, drift, groundedness, and consistency over time Partner cross‑functionally with data, architecture, and platform teams to ensure decision systems are observable, scalable, and aligned to enterprise standards Lead root‑cause analysis of decision or model failures and translate insights into systemic improvements across teams What you'll bring 8 or more years of experience delivering applied analytics, machine learning, or AI systems in production environments Expertise in predictive modeling and decision systems, including evaluation, monitoring, drift detection, and thresholding strategies. Strong understanding of generative AI systems, including grounding techniques, structured outputs, and common failure modes. Experience working with Python and modern machine learning or AI development workflows. Proven ability to influence technical direction and partner across teams to drive adoption of scalable, responsible AI practices Stay up to date on everything Blackbaud, follow us on Linkedin, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube Blackbaud powers social impact through purpose‑driven technology and responsible AI. Guided by our Intelligence for Good® vision, we’re building a culture where innovation, trust, and human expertise come together to help organizations make a greater difference in the world. Blackbaud is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and is committed to maintaining an inclusive work environment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, physical or mental disability, age, or veteran status or any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law. Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good. Serving the entire social good community—nonprofits, foundations, corporations, education institutions, healthcare institutions and individual change agents—Blackbaud connects and empowers organizations to increase their impact through software, services, expertise, and data intelligence. The Blackbaud portfolio is tailored to the unique needs of vertical markets, with solutions for fundraising and CRM, marketing, advocacy, peer-to-peer fundraising, corporate social responsibility, school management, ticketing, grantmaking, financial management, payment processing, and analytics. Serving the industry for more than three decades, Blackbaud is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina and has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.