Lead Data Scientist
First seen by Alion on Aug 21, 2026.
We are looking for an experienced Lead Data Scientist to lead NLP and machine learning initiatives, design end-to-end AI solutions, and drive the development of production-grade models. The role combines hands-on technical work with research, solution architecture, stakeholder collaboration, and mentoring of junior data scientists and researchers.
Key Responsibilities :
- Lead the design, development, and deployment of production-grade NLP and machine learning models.
- Work with modern NLP and LLM architectures, including Transformers, RoBERTa, GPT APIs, embeddings, and hybrid AI approaches.
- Architect end-to-end AI/ML solutions from problem definition and experimentation through deployment and monitoring.
- Develop robust pipelines for model training, evaluation, versioning, deployment, and continuous monitoring.
- Define appropriate evaluation metrics and establish processes to measure model performance and reliability.
- Collaborate with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to identify use cases, define requirements, and align AI solutions with business objectives.
- Conduct research and develop PoCs to evaluate emerging AI/ML techniques and technologies.
- Mentor junior data scientists, interns, and other team members through technical guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing.
- Contribute to technical publications, research papers, patents, and open-source initiatives where applicable.
- Drive best practices in model development, experimentation, documentation, reproducibility, and MLOps.
Required Skills :
- Strong expertise in NLP, machine learning, and modern deep learning architectures.
- Hands-on experience with Transformers, LLMs, embeddings, and Generative AI.
- Strong programming skills in Python with experience using PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, or equivalent frameworks.
- Experience working with GPT APIs or other commercial/open-source LLMs.
- Strong understanding of model training, fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment.
- Experience with data pipelines, MLOps, model versioning, and model monitoring.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and research capabilities.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Experience providing technical mentorship and reviewing the work of other data scientists or ML engineers.
Preferred Skills :
- Experience with vector databases such as FAISS, Pinecone, or equivalent technologies.
- Familiarity with LangChain, prompt engineering, RAG, and LLM application development.
- Experience with NLP applications such as text classification, information extraction, semantic search, summarization, or document intelligence.
- Experience managing research interns or small AI/ML teams.
- Published research in conferences or journals, or contributions to relevant open-source projects.
- Experience with cloud-based AI/ML platforms and production deployment of ML systems.
Education :
- Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, or a related technical discipline.
Skills
Data Science, Data Scientist, NLP, Machine Learning, LLM, Artificial Intelligence, Python, Deep Learning, Generative AI, Prompt Engineering, LangChain