Senior Data Scientist

Elsevier; Slough; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Shared parental leave

Study assistance

Sabbaticals

Job summary

Elsevier is hiring a Senior Data Scientist to design and deliver advanced AI, NLP, and generative AI solutions that power knowledge discovery and decision support. You will work with large scientific datasets, apply LLM-based approaches, and collaborate across teams to produce production-ready systems with measurable user impact.

The role emphasizes robust evaluation, scalable architecture, and mentorship to help the team deliver high-quality results in a hybrid London/Oxford setting.

Qualifications

• Practical experience in data science, AI, ML, NLP, information retrieval, or related quantitative field.
• Hands-on experience building AI/ML and NLP solutions in product-focused environments.
• Expertise with LLMs, fine-tuning, prompts, grounding, and responsible AI practices.
• Strong Python skills and fundamentals in machine learning.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and evaluate advanced AI/ML, NLP, and generative AI solutions for knowledge discovery.
• Develop LLM-powered workflows and RAG systems for search, summarization, QA, and evidence-grounded insights.
• Build intelligent retrieval, ranking, recommendation, and decision-support capabilities.
• Integrate scientific metadata and ontologies into scalable AI workflows.
• Establish evaluation, experimentation, and monitoring frameworks for quality and reliability.
• Write production-ready Python code and deploy solutions at scale.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to ensure high-quality delivery.

Skills

AI/ML

NLP

Information retrieval

Python

LLMs

RAG workflows

Cloud platforms

Job description

Senior Data Scientist, London/Oxford hybrid working.

Are you excited by the opportunity to design advanced AI systems that accelerate scientific discovery and unlock knowledge at scale?

Would you enjoy building production-ready solutions using machine learning, NLP, and generative AI to create meaningful impact for researchers and professionals?

About our Team

Our global team support products education electronic health records that introduce students to digital charting and prepare them to document care in today’s modern clinical environment. We have a very stable product that we’ve worked to get to and strive to maintain. Our team values trust, respect, collaboration, agility, and quality.

About the Role

In this role, you will design and deliver advanced AI, NLP, and generative AI solutions that power knowledge discovery and decision support. You will work with complex scientific data and apply modern machine learning and LLM-based approaches to build scalable, reliable systems with real user impact. You will also collaborate across teams to turn complex challenges into practical, production-ready solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and evaluate advanced AI/ML, NLP, and generative AI solutions for scientific and knowledge-discovery applications.
• Develop LLM-powered workflows and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems for search, summarization, question answering, and evidence-grounded insight generation.
• Build intelligent retrieval, ranking, recommendation, and decision-support capabilities using modern orchestration frameworks and AI techniques.
• Integrate scientific metadata, ontologies, taxonomies, and knowledge assets into scalable AI workflows.
• Establish robust evaluation, experimentation, and monitoring frameworks to ensure quality, trust, performance, and reliability.
• Write production-ready Python code and partner with engineering teams to deploy solutions at scale.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to support high-quality delivery and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• Practical experience in data science, AI, machine learning, NLP, information retrieval, or a related quantitative field.
• Strong hands-on experience building AI/ML, NLP, generative AI, and retrieval-based systems in applied or product-focused environments.
• Expertise working with LLMs, including fine-tuning, prompt engineering, grounding strategies, and responsible AI practices.
• Strong Python skills and solid machine learning fundamentals.
• Experience working with large-scale text or content-rich datasets and modern AI/ML frameworks.
• Experience with RAG, semantic, vector, or hybrid search, along with experimentation and evaluation approaches that measure user impact.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms and modern software engineering practices.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and mentoring skills.

Work in a Way That Works for You

We promote a healthy work/life balance across the organisation. We offer an appealing working prospect for our people. With numerous wellbeing initiatives, shared parental leave, study assistance, and sabbaticals, we will help you meet your immediate responsibilities and your long-term goals.

Working Pattern

Working flexible hours - flexing the times when you work in the day to help you fit everything in and work when you are the most productive

About the Business

A global leader in information and analytics, we help researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. Building on our publishing heritage, we combine quality information and vast data sets with analytics to support visionary science and research, health education and interactive learning, as well as exceptional healthcare and clinical practice. At Elsevier, your work contributes to the world's grand challenges and a more sustainable future. We harness innovative technologies to support science and healthcare to partner for a better world.