Senior Data Scientist

Our client is a global leader in the consumer beverages industry with a deep footprint across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. They are in the middle of an ambitious data and AI transformation - building a modern, cloud-native analytics platform and embedding machine learning, LLM-powered applications, and responsible AI into how the business makes decisions, engages customers, and runs commercial operations at scale.

Performance Objectives for Year One

• Lead the end-to-end design, validation, and deployment of at least one production-grade ML or LLM solution that delivers measurable business value within the first 9 months.
• Define and embed best-practice standards for model validation, testing, monitoring, and governance across the data science team, including responsible AI and model risk management practices fit for a regulated production environment.
• Build and operationalise the team's LLM application stack - covering retrieval-augmented architectures, agentic workflows, tool integration, and robust evaluation, monitoring, and cost-optimisation practices.
• Partner with data engineering and platform teams to ensure ML and AI workloads are robust, scalable, and cost-effective on the cloud platform, preferably Azure / Databricks.
• Act as the technical sparring partner for the data science team - reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, and guiding technical decisions across multiple concurrent initiatives.
• Mentor and uplift other data scientists, raising the team's standard in MLOps, statistical rigour, and production engineering, with demonstrable growth in at least two team members.