Lead Data Scientist

MRJ Recruitment Limited; Manchester; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

MRJ Recruitment Limited is seeking a Lead Data Scientist to shape and deliver high-impact ML and AI capabilities in a fast-moving B2C marketplace. You will lead agentic search experiences and intelligent decisioning influencing discovery, conversion and retention.

You will work with the Chief Data Officer and cross-functional teams to turn data into measurable outcomes, driving strategy and delivery across engineering, marketing and product.

Qualifications

• Proven experience delivering customer-facing ML solutions in a B2C product environment.
• Strong background in search, information retrieval, ranking and/or recommendation systems (preferred).
• Experience applying modern AI approaches, with interest in agentic AI/LLM-enabled patterns.
• Solid understanding of experimentation, causal thinking and measurement (A/B testing, offline/online metrics).
• Hands-on proficiency in data science toolsets (e.g., Python) and strong fundamentals in statistics and ML.
• Experience with Snowflake and cloud environments, ideally AWS, and deployment collaboration with data/ML engineering.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the data science roadmap across agentic search, ranking and recommendation systems.
• Lead end-to-end model development: framing problems, feature design, experimentation, evaluation, deployment and iteration.
• Build and optimise ranking and recommender models balancing relevance, diversity, fairness, and business objectives.
• Apply agentic AI approaches to improve discovery journeys and decisioning with LLM-enabled workflows.
• Partner with Marketing and Loyalty teams to improve personalisation, segmentation, churn reduction and lifetime value.
• Drive robust experimentation practices (A/B testing, uplift modelling, measurement frameworks).
• Collaborate with Engineering on production-grade ML systems, data pipelines and monitoring in AWS and Snowflake.
• Mentor and support other data scientists, elevating standards for scientific thinking and communication.

Skills

Customer-facing ML

Search/IR/Ranking

AI/Agentic AI

Experimentation & measurement

Python / ML tooling

Snowflake & AWS

Tools

Snowflake

AWS

Job description

We’re looking for a Lead Data Scientist to shape and deliver high-impact machine learning and AI capabilities across a fast-moving B2C marketplace. You’ll lead the development of agentic AI-powered search experiences and intelligent decisioning that directly influence discovery, conversion and customer retention.

Working closely with the Chief Data Officer, this role sits at the intersection of agentic search, rankings, recommendations, loyalty and marketing, partnering closely with Product, Engineering and Commercial teams to turn data into measurable outcomes.

If you enjoy working on large-scale, customer-facing ML systems and want to drive strategy as well as delivery, this is an opportunity to lead from the front and build capabilities that customers feel every day.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the data science roadmap across agentic search, ranking and recommendation systems, aligned to key marketplace metrics
• Lead end-to-end model development: problem framing, feature design, experimentation, evaluation, deployment and iteration
• Build and optimise ranking and recommender models, balancing relevance, diversity, fairness, trust and business objectives
• Apply agentic AI approaches to improve discovery journeys and decisioning, exploring LLM-enabled and autonomous workflows where valuable
• Partner with Marketing and Loyalty teams to improve personalisation, segmentation, churn reduction and lifetime value
• Drive robust experimentation practices (A/B testing, uplift modelling, measurement frameworks) to quantify impact
• Collaborate with Engineering on production-grade ML systems, data pipelines and monitoring in AWS and Snowflake
• Mentor and support other data scientists, raising standards for scientific thinking, code quality and stakeholder communication
• Communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders, translating complex work into actionable insights and decisions

Person requirements

• Proven experience delivering customer-facing ML solutions in a B2C product environment (marketplace, e-commerce, consumer apps or similar)
• Strong background in search, information retrieval, ranking and/or recommendation systems (preferred)
• Experience applying modern AI approaches, with interest and practical exposure to agentic AI/LLM-enabled patterns
• Solid understanding of experimentation, causal thinking and measurement (A/B testing, counterfactual evaluation, offline/online metrics)
• Hands-on proficiency in data science toolsets (e.g., Python) and strong fundamentals in statistics and machine learning
• Experience working with Snowflake and cloud environments, ideally AWS, and collaborating closely with data/ML engineering on deployment
• Ability to lead initiatives end-to-end: shaping problem statements, aligning stakeholders, and delivering outcomes
• Excellent communication skills and a pragmatic, product-minded approach to data science

Please note, we are planning to shortlisting for this role w/c 12th October (due to annual leave interviews will take place w/c 19th October)