Data Scientist (AI)

IMPACT Technology Recruiting; Phoenix (AZ); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Environmental Services Company is seeking an AI-focused Data Scientist to join its expanding AI and data science team in Phoenix. You will build production GenAI applications, create new AI products, and improve existing AI solutions across customer-facing and internal systems.

You will work with data scientists, analytics engineers, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable, reliable AI capabilities. The role requires onsite presence four days per week in Phoenix.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in data science, ML, AI engineering or related field.
• Hands-on GenAI/LLM production deployments and prompt testing.
• Proficient in Python and SQL, and cloud-based AI solutions.
• Familiar with CI/CD, Git workflows, and code reviews.
• Able to translate business problems into technical AI solutions.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy GenAI and LLM applications in production.
• Develop new AI products, capabilities, and proofs of concept.
• Improve existing AI solutions based on user feedback.
• Perform prompt engineering, testing, optimization, and debugging.
• Evaluate AI performance, impact, and solution quality.
• Address issues like hallucinations, embeddings, and vector search.
• Write maintainable production code in Python and SQL.
• Push changes to production and review code with teams.
• Collaborate with full-stack engineering and IT to integrate AI.
• Experiment, test hypotheses, and measure AI value delivery.
• Translate business requirements into practical AI solutions.
• Communicate findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Document design, data definitions, limitations, and performance.
• Support future AI initiatives and emerging use cases.

Skills

GenAI deployments

Prompt engineering

Advanced Python

SQL

Cloud deployments

Collaboration with engineers

Translate business problems

CI/CD with Git

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Statistics/Mathematics/Engineering/Information Management

Tools

AWS

Snowflake

Node.js

GitHub Copilot

Cursor

Claude Code

Git

Job description

A leading environmental services company is hiring an AI-focused Data Scientist to join its growing AI and data science team. This team develops customer-facing and internal AI solutions that improve decision-making, customer experiences, and business processes across the organization.

This is not a traditional Data Scientist role. The ideal candidate will have strong data science fundamentals combined with hands-on AI engineering experience. They need someone who has built and deployed production GenAI applications.

The role will focus primarily on building new AI products and proofs of concept while also improving and maintaining existing production solutions. You will work closely with data scientists, analytics engineers, full-stack engineers, and business stakeholders to develop AI capabilities that are scalable, reliable, and useful to the business.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Build and deploy production-ready GenAI and LLM applications
• Develop new AI products, capabilities, and proofs of concept
• Improve existing customer-facing and internal AI solutions based on user feedback
• Perform prompt engineering, testing, optimization, and debugging
• Evaluate AI performance, accuracy, business impact, and overall solution quality
• Identify and resolve issues involving hallucinations, embeddings, vector search, semantic retrieval, bias, drift, data quality, and model assumptions
• Develop well-structured, maintainable solutions using Python and SQL
• Push prompt updates and backend changes into production
• Raise pull requests, participate in code reviews, and work directly with production code
• Partner with full-stack engineering and IT teams to integrate AI capabilities into downstream systems
• Conduct experimentation, hypothesis testing, and measurement to determine whether AI solutions are delivering value
• Translate business requirements into practical AI solutions
• Clearly communicate findings and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Document solution design, assumptions, data definitions, limitations, and performance
• Support future agentic AI initiatives and other emerging AI use cases

Required Qualifications

• 3 or more years of professional experience in data science, machine learning, AI engineering, or a related field
• Hands-on experience building and deploying GenAI or LLM applications in a production environment
• Strong prompt engineering experience, including prompt testing, optimization, and debugging
• Advanced Python skills
• Strong working knowledge of SQL and relational data concepts
• Experience deploying AI or machine learning solutions in a cloud environment
• Strong understanding of data science fundamentals, including statistical analysis, model evaluation, experimentation, and performance measurement
• Experience working with Git, CI/CD pipelines, pull requests, and code-review processes
• Ability to write readable, well-organized, and maintainable production code
• Experience collaborating with software engineers or full-stack engineering teams
• Ability to work directly with business stakeholders and translate business problems into technical solutions
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, Information Management, or another analytical field

Preferred Qualifications

• AWS experience, particularly with services used to build and deploy AI applications
• Experience with RAG, embeddings, vector databases, semantic search, or retrieval-based AI applications
• Snowflake experience
• Experience with Node.js or backend application development
• MLOps or model-monitoring experience
• Agentic AI experience
• Experience building customer-facing AI products
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or Claude Code
• Master’s degree in an analytical or technical field

This is a great opportunity for someone who has a solid data science foundation but enjoys working closer to AI product development and engineering. The position requires working onsite in Phoenix four days per week.