Principal Data Scientist — Gaming ML & RL Leader

Aristocrat Leisure; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus eligibility

Health and wellbeing benefits

Paid time off

Retirement plans

Insurance coverage

Job summary

Aristocrat Leisure is hiring a Principal Data Scientist in London. You will lead end-to-end data science initiatives, delivering ML and reinforcement learning solutions to boost player engagement, retention, monetization, and operational outcomes.

You will define evaluation frameworks and partner with game teams to translate analytics into product actions. You will set engineering standards for model validation, drive scalable experiments, and work with Data Engineering, MLOps, and Game Tech to

Qualifications

• PhD or MSc in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Physics, Mathematics, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of professional data science experience with at least 3 ML products from problem definition to production.
• Proficient in clustering, predictive modeling, reinforcement learning, and Bayesian statistics.
• Hands-on software engineering, MLOps, and deploying ML models at scale.
• Proficient in SQL, Python; familiarity with Kafka, Spark and cloud platforms (GCP/AWS/Azure).
• Experience in gaming/digital entertainment is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end data science initiatives from framing to impact measurement.
• Build and deploy ML and RL solutions to improve engagement and monetization.
• Define modeling framework for complex systems with proper evaluation and monitoring.
• Partner with game teams to translate analytics into actionable product actions.
• Set engineering standards for model validation, reproducibility, and bias checks.
• Drive scalable experimentation with A/B tests and bandit methods.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering, MLOps, and Game Tech for robust data foundations.
• Develop internal data products like AB-test calculators and decision tools.
• Provide technical leadership through code reviews, mentoring, and coaching.
• Communicate insights to senior leadership to influence business decisions.

Skills

Clustering

Predictive modeling

Reinforcement learning

Bayesian statistics

Software engineering

MLOps

Model deployment at scale

SQL

Python

Education

PhD or MSc in Data Science/CS/Statistics/Physics/Mathematics or related field

Tools

Kafka

Spark

GCP

AWS

Azure

Job description

Aristocrat Leisure is hiring a Principal Data Scientist in London. You will lead end-to-end data science initiatives, delivering ML and reinforcement learning solutions to boost player engagement, retention, monetization, and operational outcomes.

You will define evaluation frameworks and partner with game teams to translate analytics into product actions. You will set engineering standards for model validation, drive scalable experiments, and work with Data Engineering, MLOps, and Game Tech to