Sandton: Lead Data Scientist posted by Sabenza IT & Recruitment

About the Role

Are you ready to shape the future of AI in a business where innovation meets real-world impact? Were on the lookout for a Lead Data Scientist to lead the design, delivery, and governance of cutting-edge machine learning and LLM solutions. This is a high-impact role where your work will directly influence strategic decisions, optimise operations, and unlock new value across the business.

Key Responsibilities

* Lead the planning and delivery of technical work from business requirements, coordinating across product and business teams to ensure alignment and smooth execution.

* Lead or participate in the design, development, validation, and deployment of machine learning and LLM-based solutions.

* Define and enforce best practices for model validation, testing, monitoring, and governance, challenging existing ways of working where needed.

* Act as a technical leader and sparring partner, reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, and guiding technical decisions.

* Collaborate with data engineering and platform teams to ensure robust, scalable, and cost-effective ML and AI workloads.

* Communicate clearly with business and technical stakeholders about trade-offs, risks, and impact. Mentor other data scientists.

Requirements

Extensive experience in data science and applied machine learning, with a track record of delivering and owning production ML systems end-to-end.

Hands-on experience with LLMs and related technologies (including but not limited to RAG, embeddings, prompt engineering, and evaluation frameworks).

Familiarity with responsible AI, model risk management, or regulated production environments. Proficient in Python, distributed data processing, and the use of Spark / Databricks.

Proven experience deploying, scaling and maintaining production-grade ML systems in a cloud environment (preferably Azure).

Strong understanding of MLOps best practices, including experiment tracking, model versioning, automated testing, CI/CD, and monitoring.

Strong grounding in statistical thinking, model evaluation, and experimentation.

Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders. Masters or PhD in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related STEM field.

Qualifications

Masters or PhD in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related STEM field.

Salary & Benefits

Not mentioned in original job description.