Senior Data Scientist

Johnson Controls; São João da Madeira; Hybrid; EUR 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and incentives

Greenfield platform architecture

Azure sponsorship and learning budget

Technical leadership path and mentored

Access to GenAI tooling and projects

Flexible hybrid working model

Job summary

Johnson Controls seeks a Senior Data Scientist to architect and ship a production-grade agentic AI platform that plans, reasons, and executes complex workflows. You will mentor engineers, lead GenAI initiatives, and collaborate across Azure cloud services.

The role demands hands-on experience with LLM-based applications, LangChain/LangGraph, and strong Python along with vectorDBs and SQL in enterprise environments. A hybrid work model is available.

Qualifications

• Proven experience building LLM/GenAI applications in production.
• Hands-on experience with agentic frameworks LangChain or LangGraph.
• Strong Python expertise (pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn) and API development.
• Experience with vector databases and embeddings (Azure AI Search, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, FAISS, or pgvector).
• Strong SQL skills and working with large-scale data.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and productionize multi-agent systems including planning, tool calling, memory, and orchestration using LangGraph, LangChain, or similar frameworks.
• Develop end-to-end RAG pipelines: document ingestion, embeddings, and vector search, with grounding for agent knowledge.
• Integrate agents with enterprise systems and APIs via tool calling patterns and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Build and maintain LLM evaluation frameworks for agentic workflows and A/B testing.
• Implement guardrails, safety, and governance for agents: prompt-injection defense and audit logging.
• Fine-tune and optimize LLMs on Azure OpenAI / Azure AI Foundry (LoRA/PEFT, latency/cost trade-offs).
• Design, build, and evaluate classical ML models to complement agentic workflows.
• Own LLMOps/MLOps: experiment tracking, prompts, CI/CD, observability, drift monitoring, retraining strategies.
• Collaborate with data engineers on data quality and governance across Azure Data Lake, Databricks, and Synapse Analytics.
• Translate business problems into agentic AI solutions; present decisions to senior stakeholders.
• Mentor junior data scientists, lead code/design reviews, and promote engineering best practices.

Skills

LLM applications in production

LangChain

LangGraph

Python (Expert)

Vector databases & embeddings

SQL

Azure OpenAI

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

Azure OpenAI

Pinecone

Weaviate

FAISS

pgvector

Azure Cognitive Search

Job description

What you will do

We are hiring a Senior Data Scientist to play a key role in building our Agentic AI Platform - a system of autonomous, tool-using AI agents that plan, reason, and execute complex business workflows end-to-end. The ideal candidate combines strong ML fundamentals with hands-on experience in LLM-based application development, agent orchestration frameworks, and Microsoft Azure cloud services. You will architect and ship production-grade agentic solutions, mentor junior team members, and set technical direction for GenAI initiatives across the organization.

How you will do it

• Design, build, and productionize multi-agent systems - including planning, tool calling / function calling, memory, and orchestration - using frameworks such as LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, or Semantic Kernel.
• Develop RAG pipelines end-to-end: document ingestion, chunking strategies, embeddings, vector search (Azure AI Search / FAISS / pgvector), re-ranking, and grounding for agent knowledge.
• Integrate agents with enterprise systems and APIs via tool/function calling and Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar connector patterns.
• Build and maintain LLM evaluation frameworks for agentic workflows - task-completion metrics, hallucination detection, trajectory analysis, LLM-as-judge pipelines, and A/B testing.
• Implement guardrails, safety, and governance for agents: prompt-injection defense, content filtering, role-based tool permissions, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and audit logging.
• Fine-tune and optimize LLMs where needed (LoRA/PEFT, prompt optimization, model routing, latency/cost trade-offs) on Azure OpenAI / Azure AI Foundry.
• Design, build, and evaluate classical ML models (classification, regression, forecasting, NLP) where they complement agentic workflows.
• Own LLMOps/MLOps for the platform: experiment tracking, prompt versioning, CI/CD, observability and tracing (LangSmith, Azure Monitor, OpenTelemetry), drift monitoring, and retraining strategies.
• Collaborate with data engineers on data quality, availability, and governance across Azure Data Lake, Databricks, and Synapse Analytics.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into agentic AI solutions; present architecture decisions and results to senior stakeholders.
• Mentor junior data scientists, lead code/design reviews, and champion engineering best practices.

What we look for

• Required professional experience in data science / ML, with building LLM or GenAI applications in production.
• Hands-on experience with agentic frameworks LangChain or LangGraph.
• Strong understanding of LLM application patterns including prompt engineering Expert-level Python (pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, async programming, API development with FastAPI).
• Experience with vector databases and embeddings (Azure AI Search, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, FAISS, or pgvector).
• Strong SQL skills and experience working with large-scale data.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and performance-based incentives.
• Opportunity to architect a greenfield agentic AI platform from the ground up.
• Azure and AI certification sponsorship plus a continuous learning budget.
• Technical leadership pathway and mentorship opportunities.
• Access to cutting-edge GenAI tooling, compute, and cross-domain AI projects.
• Flexible hybrid working model and collaborative culture.

About Us

Johnson Controls, a global leader in thermal management, mission-critical building systems, energy efficiency, and decarbonization, helps customers use energy more productively, reduce carbon emissions, and operate with the precision and resilience required in rapidly expanding industries such as data centers, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, and higher education. For more than 140 years, Johnson Controls has delivered performance where it really matters. Backed by advanced technology, lifecycle services and an industry-leading field organization, we elevate customer performance, turn goals into real-world results and help move society forward.

We are committed to diversity and inclusion and believe that different perspectives make us stronger. By encouraging open dialogue and valuing individuality, we strive to be one of the most desirable places to work.

#LI-Hybrid #LI-JT1 Johnson Controls: Enhancing the Intelligence of Buildings Your buildings have a purpose. They are places for people to live or work. Facilities for learning or healing. Venues for entertainment and shopping. Sites for the specialized storage of tangible goods or mission-critical data. Your buildings have a huge variety of functions; they are central to your mission. This is where Johnson Controls comes in, helping drive the outcomes that matter most. Through a full range of systems and digital solutions, we make your buildings smarter. A smarter building is safer, more comfortable, more efficient, and, ultimately, more sustainable. Most important, smarter buildings let you focus more intensely on your unique mission. Better for your people. Better for your bottom line. Better for the planet. At Johnson Controls, we’ve been making buildings smarter since 1885, and our capabilities, depth of innovation experience, and global reach have been growing ever since. Today, we offer the world’s largest portfolio of building products, technologies, software, and services; we put that portfolio to work to transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play.