Lead Data Scientist – Search, Retrieval & AI Evaluation

Elsevier B.V.; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

An international information and analytics leader in the UK seeks a Search and Evaluation Data Science Team Lead to lead a team in advancing AI-driven search and evaluation systems. The role involves mentoring data scientists, defining the search roadmap, and building scalable evaluation frameworks. Ideal candidates have a PhD in relevant fields and 6+ years in search or retrieval systems. The position offers flexible working hours and comprehensive benefits.

Benefits

Comprehensive Pension Plan

Home, office, or commuting allowance

Generous vacation entitlement

Flexible working hours

Maternity, Paternity, Adoption and Family Care leave

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience building and evaluating search, ranking, or retrieval systems, including 2+ years in a leadership role.
• Deep expertise in lexical search, vector retrieval, and RAG system design.
• Proven record of building scalable evaluation frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of data scientists and applied researchers.
• Define and execute the roadmap for search and retrieval excellence.
• Build and maintain gold-standard evaluation datasets.

Skills

Data Science Expertise

Leadership Skills

Programming Proficiency in Python

Experience with Retrieval Systems

Education

PhD or MSc in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Retrieval, or related field

Tools

PyTorch

Hugging Face

LangGraph

Haystack

Job description

An international information and analytics leader in the UK seeks a Search and Evaluation Data Science Team Lead to lead a team in advancing AI-driven search and evaluation systems. The role involves mentoring data scientists, defining the search roadmap, and building scalable evaluation frameworks. Ideal candidates have a PhD in relevant fields and 6+ years in search or retrieval systems. The position offers flexible working hours and comprehensive benefits.