Senior Data Scientist

Ocho; Belfast City District; Hybrid; GBP 95,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Ocho in Belfast is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to own the full data-to-production lifecycle of ML models and agent-based systems. You will partner with data scientists to turn experimental models into robust, scalable pipelines and drive platform observability and deployment practices.

We are a fast-scaling AI-first software business, offering ownership of ML platform strategy and production reliability across cutting-edge LLM-enabled workflows.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field.
• 5+ years in data engineering and ML production, including 2+ years in MLOps.
• Hands-on GCP Vertex AI & BigQuery experience.
• Experience building data and feature pipelines for ML training.
• Experience with ML pipeline tools (MLflow, Kubeflow, Vertex AI, SageMaker) and CI/CD for models.
• Strong Python, Go or Java and production-grade coding.
• Experience mentoring engineers and guiding technical direction.
• Experience operating LLM/agent systems in production.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain pipelines for training data, features and embeddings with reliable data quality.
• Partner with data scientists to make training pipelines robust and repeatable.
• Own reliability, monitoring and incident response for ML models and agents in production, including CI/CD and rollback.
• Build observability into ML services with latency, error rates and alerting.
• Help develop the 1–2 year roadmap for the team’s data and ML platform.
• Set engineering standards across the data-to-production lifecycle and review designs.
• Collaborate with infra/release teams on ML serving work in production.

Skills

Data engineering

ML production

MLOps

Python

Go/Java

CI/CD tooling

Mentoring

Feature engineering

LLM platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Master's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

MLflow

Kubeflow

Vertex AI

SageMaker

Docker

Kubernetes

BigQuery

Job description

Senior Data Scientist (ML Platform & Production)

• Senior individual contributor role at a scaling AI-first software business
• Own the full data-to-production lifecycle across ML models, agents and platform infrastructure
• Belfast based, hybrid working
• Salary £95,000 to £110,000
• UK work authorisation required

About the Company

Our client is a fast-scaling, AI-first software business building cutting-edge agent and LLM-based systems at scale. With a cross-functional engineering team that moves quickly and a genuine commitment to technical excellence, this is an environment where senior data professionals can take real ownership of complex, meaningful problems. The Belfast team sits at the heart of the company's AI engineering capability, working on challenges that are shaping the future of intelligent software.

The Role

A newly created senior individual contributor position bridging the gap between exploratory machine learning research and high-scale, reliable production systems. You will own the full data-to-production lifecycle, partnering closely with data scientists to turn complex experimental models and agentic workflows into robust, reproducible pipelines. Alongside delivery, you will establish observability standards, lead deployment practices, drive platform roadmap development and mentor engineers across the team. This role suits a senior ML or data engineering professional who is equally comfortable in the weeds of a training pipeline and setting the technical direction for a growing platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and maintain reliable, reproducible pipelines for training data, feature generation and embeddings, ensuring models train on accurate and well-understood data
• Partner with data scientists to make training pipelines robust, reproducible and easy to iterate on
• Own the reliability, monitoring and incident response for ML models and agents running in production, including CI/CD, versioning, canary and shadow deployment, and rollback
• Build observability into ML services covering latency, error rates, drift detection and quality regressions, with actionable alerting
• Assist with developing the one to two year roadmap for the team's data and ML platform in partnership with data platform and infrastructure leads
• Set engineering standards across the data-to-production lifecycle, conduct design reviews and mentor engineers on production-grade practices
• Work closely with infrastructure and release teams, absorbing ML serving and pipeline work currently distributed across the team

What You'll Need

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5 or more years of experience spanning data engineering and ML production engineering, including 2 or more years specifically in MLOps or ML production systems
• Hands-on production experience with Google Cloud Platform, specifically Vertex AI and BigQuery
• Strong experience building data and feature pipelines for ML training, not just serving pipelines
• Hands-on experience with ML pipeline tooling such as MLflow, Kubeflow, Vertex AI or SageMaker, and CI/CD for model lifecycle management
• Strong experience with cloud infrastructure and container and orchestration tooling including Docker and Kubernetes
• Proven track record owning production incidents for ML and data systems, including detection, mitigation, rollback and post-incident follow-through
• Strong software engineering fundamentals in Python, Go or Java
• Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction without direct authority
• Direct experience partnering with data scientists on feature engineering or model training pipelines
• Experience operating LLM or agent-based systems in production including LLMOps
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field
• Background mentoring less experienced engineers moving into production-facing work

Why Apply?

• Salary of £95,000 to £110,000
• Newly created senior role with full ownership of ML platform strategy and production reliability at a scaling AI business
• Work at the cutting edge of MLOps, LLM deployment and agentic AI systems in production
• Close-knit, cross-functional engineering team with a strong culture of technical excellence and mentorship
• Belfast based with a business that is genuinely pushing the boundaries of intelligent software

Interested?