ML / Data Science Consultant

At Quill, we are building PodPromote, a system that turns a podcast client's intake into a paid advertising strategy: which ad partners to use, budget per tactic, and expected downloads.
We are looking for a senior data scientist or ML practitioner for a short, one-time engagement. This is not a full-time hire.  We need an expert to review our data and tell us exactly what to build, including whether we need ML at all.

What you'll do

• Review our historical intake-to-strategy data and identify which inputs actually drive strategy selection
• Recommend the simplest approach (rules, classical ML, or LLM-assisted) that hits 85–90% accuracy with explainable outputs
• Define the evaluation framework and a clear build plan
• Hand it off to our team so they can own it

You have

• Production ML experience: models real clients used
• Strong small-data, tabular skills (multi-label classification, feature importance, Python, scikit-learn, XGBoost/LightGBM)
• The judgement to recommend "no ML" when that is the right call
• Clear communication and comfort mentoring a developer
• A base in Canada (required)

Details: Remote · Starting October 2026 · Hours scoped together · Rate open

Interested? Send a short note mentioning your interest in this contract position with your CV and we will get in touch with you!