Lead Data Scientist

This role exists to provide technical leadership and assurance across data science, ensuring machine learning solutions are designed, built, and operated to a high and consistent technical standard. The role focuses on enabling scalable, reliable delivery of data science solutions aligned to business priorities defined elsewhere. 

WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING:

• Acting as a technical lead for data science, guiding modelling approach and solution design across multiple initiatives.  
• Working closely with business stakeholders to translate priority use cases into technically sound, production‑ready data science solutions.  
• Providing hands‑on technical leadership across the data science lifecycle, from problem framing and modelling through deployment and ongoing optimisation.  
• Defining and embedding technical standards and best practices for experimentation, validation, documentation, and reproducibility.  
• Reviewing and challenging technical designs and implementations, providing clear technical direction and sign‑off.  
• Supporting and mentoring data scientists on complex technical challenges.  
• Partnering with Data Architecture, ML & Data Engineering, and BI teams to ensure solutions are scalable, robust, and production‑ready.  
• Evaluating new techniques and tools, guiding their pragmatic adoption.  
• Communicating technical assumptions, risks, and trade‑offs clearly to technical and non‑technical stakeholders. 

 Accountable for: 

• The technical quality and consistency of data science solutions delivered within assigned domains.  
• Ensuring solutions meet agreed performance, scalability, reliability, and maintainability standards.  
• Consistent application of data science standards, reducing delivery risk and technical debt.  
• Providing ongoing technical assurance that solutions remain fit for production as usage and complexity increase. 
• Maintaining strong technical partnerships with stakeholders as a trusted advisor.  
• Raising the overall technical maturity of data science within the organisation

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

Essential Criteria:

• Extensive experience delivering production‑grade, commercially impactful data science solutions, gained in a data science or machine learning roles.  
• Proven experience operating as a senior technical lead, reviewer, or technical sign‑off authority.  
• Strong experience building ML solutions on cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure).  
• Advanced expertise in Python and SQL.  
• Deep applied knowledge of machine learning techniques, including regression, classification, clustering, and time‑series forecasting.  
• Experience supporting production deployment and lifecycle management of ML models.  
• Strong understanding of data warehousing, data modelling, and modern data architecture.  
• Excellent communication skills, able to explain technical decisions clearly to non‑technical stakeholders. 

 Preferred Skills: 

• Experience with recommender systems or&