Senior AI Data Scientist

Want to use Generative AI and modern AI technologies to transform how Rabobank serves business lending customers and colleagues?

• Hybride; Utrecht (NL)
• 36 uur
• Fulltime
• Salary: Gross monthly salary between EUR 5,994 and EUR 8,563 (scale 10) for a 36-hour work week.

You & your role

As a Senior AI Data Scientist within Intelligence & AI, you develop and operationalise advanced AI solutions that make Business Lending smarter, faster and more effective.

You work at the intersection of data, technology, risk and business. Your primary focus is the design and delivery of AI solutions for decision support processes. This includes applications such as document intelligence, knowledge retrieval, analytical workflow automation and AI-powered colleague support alongside more traditional machine learning applications in areas such as credit decisioning, risk segmentation and underwriting.

Rather than developing foundation models ourselves, we use existing models, including open-weight models, as building blocks for solutions tailored to Business Lending. You combine these models with proprietary data, domain knowledge and robust engineering practices to solve concrete business problems. Your responsibility goes beyond developing an algorithm or prototype. You contribute throughout the AI solution lifecycle, from problem definition and experimentation to evaluation, deployment, monitoring and continuous improvement. You excel at translating complex business challenges into practical AI and analytics solutions and help stakeholders understand both the opportunities and limitations of AI.

This role is designed for an experienced contributor who wants to expand their technical influence within the team without moving into people management. You remain deeply hands-on while increasing your impact through technical leadership, coaching of juniors and mediors and collaboration with stakeholders across the bank.

Beyond building solutions, you'll help define the roadmap, establish technical standards, guide architectural decisions, and contribute to the evolution of AI practices within Business Lending while collaborating with AI communities across Rabobank.

Examples of what you will work on

• Evaluating and selecting foundation models, LLMs and AI approaches for Business Lending use cases.
• Building AI solutions that combine foundation models with proprietary data and domain knowledge.
• Applying NLP and GenAI techniques to extract, classify and enrich information from business lending processes and customer engagement
• Designing evaluation frameworks to compare models and approaches based on quality, robustness and business value.
• Working with ML Engineers and Data Engineers to turn successful experiments into scalable production solutions.

The Intelligence & AI design specifically includes 1st-line business model development, alternative data, AI-powered automation, document intelligence, RAG, model evaluation and production deployment.

Key responsibilities

• AI solution development: Lead the design, evaluation and continuous improvement of AI solutions for Business Lending, from experimentation to production.
• LLMs and open-weight models: Evaluate and apply LLMs and open-weight models using modern development approaches, including prompting, RAG, model optimisation and orchestration, to build domain-specific AI solutions.
• Underwriting & decisioning: Develop models using traditional and alternative data to improve credit assessment, risk segmentation and real-time or near-real-time decisioning.
• Model quality & MLOps: Ensure AI solutions are robust, explainable and reliable, with strong practices for evaluation, testing, versioning, deployment, monitoring and lifecycle management.
• Technical leadership: Define technical standards, guide architectural decisions and contribute to the evolution of AI practices across the organisation, while remaining a hands-on individual contributor.

Together we achieve more than alone

We are very curious about what you can bring to our Intelligence & AI team within Area Data & Modelling and Tribe Business Lending. As a Senior AI Data Scientist, you are one of the technical leaders within this environment. You help colleagues solve difficult problems, challenge technical choices and raise the quality of our Data Science and AI practices (without needing to become a people manager).

Work on yourself and the world around you at the same time

For us, your development and that of society go hand in hand. That’s why we want to invest in you and work together for a better world. You’ll see this reflected in your personal development budget, our hybrid working environment, and a healthy balance between work and home.

This is what we offer you

• Extras: a thirteenth month, 8% holiday allowance, and a 10% Employee Benefit Budget.
• Development budget: EUR 1,400 development budget per year for your growth and development.
• Hybrid working: a balance between home and office work (possible for most roles).
• Pension: decide for yourself the amount of your personal contribution.

You & your talent

You recognise yourself in the following:

• You have a Master's degree in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Econometrics or another relevant quantitative field.
• You have at least 10 years of professional experience as a Data Scientist, with extensive experience taking models and AI solutions from experimentation to production.
• You have experience developing AI solutions using modern approaches, including prompting, RAG, and evaluation methodologies.
• You have hands-on experience with modern AI approaches such as NLP, LLMs, retrieval systems or agent-based solutions..
• You are highly proficient in Python and write maintainable, testable and production-quality code.
• You have experience with Azure, Databricks, building AI pipelines and comparable cloud-native AI platforms.
• You have a strong understanding of MLOps and model lifecycle management, including the engineering principles required to operate scalable ML and AI solutions.
• You understand the principles of Responsible AI and can balance innovation with appropriate governance, explainability and risk management.
• You can translate complex business challenges into practical AI solutions, influence technical decisions and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• You can actively contribute to the growth of the AI community by mentoring colleagues, sharing knowledge and helping establish engineering and data science best practices.

Nice to have

• Experience with real-time or near-real-time scoring solutions is a pre.
• Experience within financial services, lending or another regulated environment is a pre
• Mastering the Dutch language is a pre

• You are based in the Netherlands and can regularly work from our Utrecht office.
• A case study and a reliability assessment are part of the procedure.