--- title: 'Data Scientist at OpenRouter' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-openrouter-united-states-4aqxa5hkcdbc' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-12' --- # Data Scientist at OpenRouter - **Company:** OpenRouter - **Location:** United States - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-08-13 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openrouter/c8ee3a10-ae18-4d8b-9390-369ebea7b03f ## Job description ## About OpenRouter OpenRouter is the leading AI routing and infrastructure layer that developers and enterprises use to access, manage, and optimize the best large language models across providers without lock-in, capacity constraints, or unnecessary cost. We power the most advanced AI teams in the world by giving them the flexibility to move fast, scale confidently, and stay future-proof as models evolve. As enterprise adoption of AI accelerates, OpenRouter sits at the center of how organizations operationalize LLMs across research, product, and production workloads. ## The Role As a Data Scientist, you will build the intelligence layer that powers how millions of developers and AI agents interact with the world's largest model marketplace. OpenRouter processes billions of LLM generations spanning every major model, provider, and use case. Your job is to turn that data into a better product and a better experience for our customers. You will work directly with our customer-facing and product teams to understand how requests are routed, where customers hit friction, which behaviors drive growth or churn, and what insights we should surface back to users so they can understand and optimize their own AI usage. This is not a reporting role. You will own questions end to end: framing the problem, digging into the data, and shipping the answer. That might be a change to our routing heuristics, a new analytics product for customers, or a recommendation that shapes the roadmap. Whatever form it takes, the insights you generate feed directly back into the product, and you will see your work in the experience of every customer we serve. ## What You'll Do - Build and improve the rules, heuristics, and models that drive our core model routing and provider routing systems. - Build analytics products and conduct deep-dive analyses that empower users to understand usage, diagnose issues, and optimize workflows while informing our product strategy. - Design and ship user-facing data features, from task-type classification taxonomies to public rankings pages that break down model performance by use case. - Define and track product metrics such as feature adoption, user engagement, and platform health, directly tying these insights to roadmap and architectural decisions. - Contribute meaningfully to the data warehouse (dbt, ClickHouse) to ensure the analytical foundation scales with the business. ## What You Bring ## Experience & Technical Skills - Experience building and shipping production-level data products such as models, algorithms, classifiers, scoring systems, or automated processes. - Proven ability to partner with engineering and product teams to convert insights and analytics into customer facing features. - Strong SQL skills. You can write complex, performant queries against large-scale analytical databases (ClickHouse, BigQuery, or similar). - Deep fluency with AI and agents. You use LLMs and AI tools in your daily work, understand how they behave, and have informed opinions on model evaluation, prompt engineering, and the agentic ecosystem. - Excellent statistical and mathematical foundations. You think in distributions, causal inference, and experimental design, not just averages and dashboards. - Proficiency in Python (or similar scripting language). You can prototype models, run simulations, and build data pipelines. - 4+ years of relevant experience in a data science, applied ML, or quantitative product role at a high-growth, high-velocity company. Mindset & Approach - Product-oriented. You build for the developer, not just for intellectual interest. You have strong product sense and can translate ambiguous, complex systems into clear, shippable solutions. - Highly motivated and independent. You thrive in fast-moving, low-structure environments. You don't wait for tickets; you identify the highest-leverage problem and go solve it. - AI-first in your own workflow. You use coding agents, MCP servers, and modern AI tools heavily and have strong opinions about what works. - Incredible problem solver. You can navigate ambiguity, break down complex systems, and find creative approaches where others see dead ends. - Strong written communication. You can distill complex analysis into clear recommendations for technical and non-technical audiences alike. Bonus Points - Experience with LLM evaluation and benchmarking such as online/offline evals, human-in-the-loop assessment, safety/quality guardrails. - Experience with developer platforms, APIs/SDKs, or usage-based products. - NLP or machine learning engineering experience building classifiers, embeddings, or ranking models. - TypeScript experience. Parts of our stack (routing engine, API layer, front-end) are TypeScript. Being able to contribute directly to the product codebase is a meaningful plus. ## About OpenRouter ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: OpenRouter provides a unified API that gives developers access to 400+ large language models from 70+ providers through a single interface. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series B) - **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Alex Atallah (CEO, Co-Founder), Louis Vichy (Co-Founder) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: AI Infrastructure / Developer Tools - **Target customers**: B2B — software developers, AI application builders, and enterprises building agentic and LLM-powered products. - **Mission or purpose**: To be the unified interface for LLMs, helping developers build AI applications without worrying about provider lock-in, downtime, or complex integrations. ## Products & Services - **Unified LLM API**: A single, OpenAI-compatible API endpoint that provides access to 400+ models from 70+ providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral, etc.). Handles authentication, request routing, rate limiting, and automatic failover. Developers avoid managing separate API keys and billing relationships. - **Enterprise Offering**: Custom data policies, fine-grained provider controls, and dedicated support for organizations that need data governance and compliance. - **Model & App Rankings**: A public leaderboard and community hub for discovering top-performing models and AI applications built on the platform. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed. - **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$200M** across multiple rounds (Seed, Series A, Series B). - **Latest Funding**: $120M venture round in April 2026. - **Notable Investors**: Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, ServiceNow Ventures, League of Generalists. - **Growth Signals**: Processes **100 trillion tokens monthly**; serves **250k+ apps** and **4.2M+ global users**; headcount grew **+611% year-over-year** to 46 employees; LinkedIn followers grew **+871.9% year-over-year** to 14,754. ## Competitive Advantages - **Provider Agnosticism**: Developers are not locked into a single provider; OpenRouter handles failover and routing across 70+ providers, ensuring high availability and resilience. - **Cost Optimization**: Offers better prices than going direct to many providers, with no subscription fees — users simply buy credits. - **Massive Model Selection**: 400+ models in one API, from frontier reasoning models to lightweight, cost-optimized options, enabling dynamic model selection per task. - **OpenAI-Compatible SDK**: Drop-in replacement for existing OpenAI integrations, minimizing migration friction. ## Strategic Focus - **Scaling Infrastructure**: Building distributed inference infrastructure to improve reliability and reduce latency for global users. - **Enterprise Adoption**: Growing enterprise sales team and launching dedicated enterprise features (data policies, compliance controls). - **Agentic Development**: Supporting the next wave of autonomous AI agents with robust routing, fallback, and observability. - **Platform Expansion**: Growing the ecosystem of featured agents and apps built on OpenRouter. ## Why Work Here - **Remote First**: Flexibility to work from anywhere in the US. - **Small, High-Impact Team**: ~46 employees with a flat structure where every person has direct impact on the product and users. - **Competitive Compensation**: Top-of-market salary and equity packages. - **Health & Wellness**: Fully covered health, dental, and vision plans for you and your dependents. - **WFH Budget**: Annual stipend for home office setup and internet. - **Unlimited PTO**: Encouraged time off to recharge. - **Quarterly Offsites**: Regular team gatherings to connect in person. - **Engineering Culture**: High ownership, small team punching above its weight, building critical AI infrastructure at massive scale (100T tokens/month). ## Strategic Focus - **Scaling Infrastructure**: Building distributed inference routing to improve reliability and reduce latency globally. - **Enterprise Growth**: Expanding enterprise sales, security, and compliance features to serve larger organizations. - **Agentic Ecosystem**: Supporting the next wave of autonomous AI agents with robust routing, fallback, and observability. - **Platform Expansion**: Growing the marketplace of featured agents and apps, and deepening integrations with developer tools. ## Competitive Advantages - **Provider Agnosticism**: Developers are not locked into a single provider; OpenRouter handles failover and routing across 70+ providers, ensuring high availability. - **Cost Optimization**: Offers better prices than going direct to many providers, with no subscription fees — users simply buy credits. - **Massive Model Selection**: 400+ models in one API, from frontier reasoning models to lightweight, cost-optimized options. - **OpenAI-Compatible SDK**: Drop-in replacement for existing OpenAI integrations, minimizing migration friction. ## Why Work Here - **Remote First**: Flexibility to work from anywhere in the US. - **High Impact, Small Team**: ~46 employees, each with direct impact on the product and millions of users. - **Competitive Compensation**: Top-of-market salary and equity packages. - **Health & Wellness**: Fully covered health, dental, and vision plans for you and your dependents. - **WFH Budget**: Annual stipend for home office setup and internet. - **Unlimited PTO**: Encouraged time off to recharge. - **Quarterly Offsites**: Regular team gatherings to connect in person. - **Engineering Culture**: High ownership, small team punching above its weight, building critical AI infrastructure at massive scale. ## Sources 1. [openrouter.ai](https://openrouter.ai/) 2. [openrouter.ai/careers](https://openrouter.ai/careers) 3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/openrouter](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openrouter/) 4. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/openrouter) 5. [linkedin.com/company/openrouter](https://www.linkedin.com/company/openrouter) ## Other roles at OpenRouter - [Enterprise Support Engineer (West Coast)](https://feeny.ai/job/enterprise-support-engineer-west-coast-openrouter-united-states-gxr6zg59bhm7) — United States - [Strategic Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-account-executive-openrouter-united-states-140am3chk0r0) — United States - [Community Lead, Developer Relations](https://feeny.ai/job/community-lead-developer-relations-openrouter-san-francisco-bay-area-5jz0m5q2grgm) — San Francisco Bay Area, CA - [Third-Party Risk Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/third-party-risk-analyst-openrouter-united-states-yz8rjkff2wd2) — United States - [Customer Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-engineer-openrouter-united-states-sk54wh1a5gjp) — United States - [Director, Revenue Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/director-revenue-operations-openrouter-united-states-ymhde7q5cbds) — United States - [Program Manager, Provider Partnerships](https://feeny.ai/job/program-manager-provider-partnerships-openrouter-united-states-2tgpwwh62d9z) — United States - [Partner Development Manager, Provider Ecosystem](https://feeny.ai/job/partner-development-manager-provider-ecosystem-openrouter-united-states-7sdqaz37f4f8) — United States - [Business Development Representative](https://feeny.ai/job/business-development-representative-openrouter-united-states-z4gve8eqs39v) — United States - [Senior Manager, Product Partnerships](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-product-partnerships-openrouter-united-states-v4bx563t08j7) — United States