AI Science Manager: LLM, RAG & Personalisation

Rakuten Asia Pte Ltd; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Rakuten Asia Pte. Ltd. in Singapore seeks a Data Science Manager to lead the applied AI science within the CXD team, directing data scientists and ML engineers to advance the conversational AI platform.

Based in Singapore, you will set the technical direction and drive improvements in model quality, retrieval, and personalization. Collaborate with product and engineering across Japan and APAC, ensure scientific rigour, and deliver measurable business outcomes at scale.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in applied ML or NLP with leadership experience.
• PhD preferred; equivalent industry research will be considered.
• Hands-on with LLMs, RAG, and production ML systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead data science and ML engineering teams; set roadmaps across Runtime Decision and Learning planes.
• Own end-to-end LLM lifecycle, model evaluation, fine-tuning, and production sign-off.
• Drive RAG architectures, retrieval quality, and knowledge base health.
• Define evaluation frameworks and run online experiments to improve product metrics.
• Shape memory, context, and personalization strategies at scale.

Skills

Applied ML leadership

NLP / LLMs

Team management

RAG systems

Experimentation (A/B)

Python

Cloud ML infrastructure (GCP)

Cross-cultural communication

Cross-regional collaboration

Education

PhD in Computer Science / ML / NLP

Tools

GCP

Vector search

Knowledge bases

Job description

Rakuten Asia Pte. Ltd. in Singapore seeks a Data Science Manager to lead the applied AI science within the CXD team, directing data scientists and ML engineers to advance the conversational AI platform.

Based in Singapore, you will set the technical direction and drive improvements in model quality, retrieval, and personalization. Collaborate with product and engineering across Japan and APAC, ensure scientific rigour, and deliver measurable business outcomes at scale.