Lead Data Scientist

Formula.; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 96,000 - 126,000; Part time

Job summary

Formula. in London seeks a contract Lead Data Scientist to embed AI at scale. You will prototype, guide production deployment, and optimize AI across workflows, working alongside business analysts and engineers.

The role starts hands-on with potential to build a team as the function grows and you’ll map data across systems, design metrics, and explain trade-offs to senior stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Lead Data Scientist with hands-on production experience.
• Proven ability to map data across systems and design data models.
• Strong metrics and dashboards experience for business impact.
• Experience deploying AI/ML in professional services or regulated environments.

Responsibilities

• Taking models and LLM-based solutions into Production, including prompt design, RAG and evaluation.
• Mapping data across client, document, time and billing systems, and helping to define a target data model.
• Defining baseline metrics and building before-and-after analysis and dashboards to show impact in business terms.
• Working out the unit economics of AI-enabled work, including consumption, licence and cost per task.
• Monitoring live models for quality degradation and recommending fixes.
• Using Python and SQL, plus a cloud data platform such as Azure, Databricks or Snowflake.
• Explaining trade-offs clearly to senior, non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience in professional services, PE-backed or regulated environments is a strong advantage.

Skills

Production deployment

Prompt design

RAG

Model evaluation

Data mapping

Metrics dashboards

Unit economics

Model monitoring

Python

SQL

Azure

Databricks

Snowflake

Stakeholder communication

Professional services experience

Tools

Azure

Databricks

Snowflake

Job description

Lead Data Scientist: Contract | Up to £600/day | Hybrid, London

A growing professional services business is looking for a contract Lead Data Scientist. AI tools are already used across the organisation. The next phase is embedding AI into its core work at scale and showing measurable results. This is a new Lead Data Scientist role on a programme that’s still taking shape.

As a Lead Data Scientist, you’d work with subject matter experts, business analysts and engineers to find where AI adds the most value in day-to-day workflows. You’d prototype solutions, guide them into Production and keep them performing once they’re live.

The data landscape is still being defined, so there’s real scope to shape how AI and data science are used across the business. You’ll start as a hands‑on Lead Data Scientist, with the chance to build a team as the function grows.

As a contract Lead Data Scientist, you’ll be competent in:

• Taking models and LLM-based solutions into Production, including prompt design, RAG and evaluation (human-in-the-loop and LLM-as-Judge)
• Mapping data across client, document, time and billing systems, and helping to define a target data model
• Defining baseline metrics and building before-and-after analysis and dashboards to show impact in business terms
• Working out the unit economics of AI-enabled work, including consumption, licence and cost per task
• Monitoring live models for quality degradation and recommending fixes
• Using Python and SQL, plus a cloud data platform such as Azure, Databricks or Snowflake
• Explaining trade-offs clearly to senior, non-technical stakeholders
• Experience in professional services, PE-backed or regulated environments is a strong advantage

Please note, not all applicants will receive feedback given the number of applications received.