Lead Data & AI Scientist - ML Models Economic Crime Intelligence

Lloyd's; Leeds; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial institution in Leeds is seeking a Lead Data & AI Scientist to enhance its economic crime prevention capabilities. This role involves building advanced models to detect fraud and financial crime utilizing machine learning and natural language processing. Candidates should have a degree in a related field and experience with AI frameworks. The position offers various benefits including an annual bonus, generous pension contributions, and 30 days' holiday.

Benefits

Generous pension contribution of up to 15%

An annual performance-related bonus

Share schemes including free shares

30 days’ holiday, with bank holidays on top

Range of wellbeing initiatives

Qualifications

• Experience building, deploying, and maintaining NLP/Deep Learning Systems.
• Extensive experience in at least one Deep Learning framework.
• Strong leadership skills using empathy, clarity, and challenge.

Responsibilities

• Build machine-learned models to detect and prevent fraud.
• Lead small teams in AI product development.
• Engage with stakeholders to identify data-AI solutions.

Skills

Machine Learning

Natural Language Processing

Deep Learning

Data Engineering

Python

Education

Degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Mathematics or similar field

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

GCP

NumPy

Scikit-Learn

Pandas

Job description

Join our team if you have an appetite for innovation that leads to incredible impact! In the Economic Crime Prevention (ECP) Platform Team, our mission is to reduce harm to our communities by enhancing Lloyds Banking Group’s capability to prevent, detect and respond to economic crime. The Platform sits within Consumer Relationships and plays a critical role in providing services across the whole Group. We’re looking to recruit a Lead Data & AI Scientist to lead on the delivery of sophisticated methods to a wide range of ECP use cases including natural language processing, generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and graph‑based Machine Learning (ML). We are seeking a candidate with a genuine passion for AI and protecting customers that can apply the latest advances in the field to help identify and prevent acts of fraud and financial crime across tens of millions of transactions per day. Day to day, you will:

Responsibilities

• Use your skill set to build machine‑learned models to detect and prevent fraud and financial crime.
• Lead small teams in the development and maintenance of AI products that serve internal and external customers.
• Work with diverse datasets and efficiently process and learn from them in order to gain insights.
• Engage with data engineering teams within the Economic Crime Intelligence lab to help guide how we can best make use of our ECP data.
• Work closely with stakeholders to understand business problems and help guide where data‑AI solutions could prove fruitful.

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Mathematics or similar field.
• Experience building, deploying and maintaining NLP/Deep Learning Systems.
• Extensive experience in at least one Deep Learning framework (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX).
• Well versed in the scientific Python ecosystem (NumPy, Scikit‑Learn, Pandas, etc.).
• Strong Data Engineering underpinnings and an ability to work with big data (TBs).
• Strong leadership skills, using empathy, clarity and challenge to support your team to be their best.
• Strong communication skills with an ability to adapt style for different audiences.

Additional Experience That Would Be Very Useful

• Experience with Huggingface or PyTorch Geometric libraries.
• Understanding of MLOps and how it applies to the entire model lifecycle.
• Experience deploying models behind APIs.
• Experience with cloud platforms, especially GCP and Vertex.

About working for us: Our focus is to ensure we’re inclusive every day, building an organisation that reflects modern society and celebrates diversity in all its forms. We want our people to feel that they belong and can be their best, regardless of background, identity or culture. We were one of the first major organisations to set goals on diversity in senior roles, create a menopause health package, and a dedicated Working with Cancer initiative – and it’s why we especially welcome applications from under‑represented groups. We’re disability confident, so if you’d like reasonable adjustments to be made to our recruitment processes, just let us know. We also offer a wide‑ranging benefits package, which includes:

Benefits

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%
• An annual performance‑related bonus
• Share schemes including free shares
• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping
• 30 days’ holiday, with bank holidays on top
• A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies