Data Scientist Manager

Hackajob Ltd; Leeds; On-site; GBP 81,000 - 99,000; Full time

Job summary

Kainos is seeking a Senior AI Technical Lead to drive delivery of production-grade AI solutions in a leadership capacity from Leeds. You will shape architecture, product design, and engineering excellence while engaging with C-level stakeholders to set strategic directions.

The role emphasizes hands-on technical leadership, governance, and mentoring of a growing AI team within a vibrant data and AI practice.

Qualifications

• Must hold a 2.1 degree in a quantitative field (CS/AI/DS)
• Proven experience leading multi-disciplinary AI/ML delivery teams
• Technical leadership across architecture, product design, and engineering
• Deep understanding of AI/ML models including time series, supervised/unsupervised, RL, and LLMs
• Experience with modern AI engineering approaches (prompting, RAG, agentic AI)
• Strong Python skills with software engineering best practices (CI/CD, testing, code reviews)
• Expertise in data engineering for AI and handling large, unstructured/multimodal data
• Knowledge of responsible AI, interpretability, and ethics

Responsibilities

• Deliver advanced AI solutions leveraging ML, generative AI, and agentic AI
• Promote modern AI development and scalable cloud-native architectures
• Provide technical leadership and align with senior stakeholders on principles and architecture
• Foster innovation, learning, and engineering excellence within the team
• Coach and develop team members, maintain standards, and nurture client relationships

Skills

Team leadership

Python

CI/CD

Data engineering for AI

LLMs

AI safety & ethics

Stakeholder management

Open-source ML

MLOps practices

RAG

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/AI/DS with 2:1

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

Salary: £90,000 - 90,000 per year

Requirements:

• We require a minimum of a 2.1 degree in Computer Science, AI, Data Science, Statistics, or a similar quantitative field.
• We require proven experience leading multi-disciplinary teams to deliver high-quality AI/ML solutions.
• We require demonstrable technical leadership for AI delivery, including architecture, product design principles, and engineering excellence.
• We require a deep understanding of AI/ML models, including time series, supervised and unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and LLMs.
• We require experience with modern AI engineering approaches such as prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agentic AI.
• We require strong Python skills with a grounding in software engineering best practices, including CI/CD, testing, and code reviews.
• We require expertise in data engineering for AI, including handling large-scale, unstructured, and multimodal data.
• We require understanding of responsible AI principles, model interpretability, and ethical considerations.
• We require strong interpersonal skills with the ability to lead client projects, manage C-level stakeholders, and establish requirements and architecture concepts.
• We require experience managing, coaching, and developing junior team members and contributing to wider community development.
• Desirable experience includes modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow, fine-tuning or distillation of LLMs, and machine learning libraries such as scikit-learn and XGBoost.
• Desirable experience includes data storage for AI, vector databases, semantic search, and knowledge graphs.
• Desirable experience includes contributing to open-source AI projects, research publications, and industry events or websites.
• Desirable familiarity includes AI security, privacy, and compliance standards such as ISO42001.

Responsibilities:

• We are responsible for successful delivery of advanced AI solutions leveraging machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI technologies.
• We drive the adoption of modern AI development and scalable cloud-native architectures.
• We provide technical leadership and engage with senior stakeholders to agree architectural principles, strategic direction, and system architecture.
• We foster a culture of innovation, continuous learning, and engineering excellence across our team and the wider industry.
• We manage, coach, and develop our team, with a focus on standards, policies, enduring customer relationships, and commercial acumen.
• We provide direction and leadership as we solve challenging problems together.

Technologies:

• Agentic AI
• AI
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• Fine-tuning
• Support
• Machine Learning
• PyTorch
• Python
• RAG
• Security
• TensorFlow
• AWS

More:

We are Kainos, a leading AI and data business with a decade-long track record of delivering production-grade AI solutions across government, healthcare, defence, and commercial sectors. We are partnered with major technology providers and operate a 150-strong AI and Data Practice focused on machine learning, generative AI, agentic AI, and data. We are pioneers in responsible AI and are committed to ethical, secure, and measurable AI delivery. We believe in a people-first culture where ideas are valued, growth is supported, and creativity and collaboration are celebrated. We are also committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we welcome candidates from all backgrounds and will support reasonable recruitment adjustments where needed.

last updated 40 week of 2026