Data Scientist - NLP / Generative AI

AIToolboard

Arlington (VA)

Hybrid

USD 150,000 - 190,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Flexible spending account

Performance bonuses

401k match

Training budget

Unlimited leave

Job summary

BizFirst is assisting with the recruitment of a Data Scientist specializing in NLP and Generative AI for hybrid work in Arlington, Virginia. The role combines hands-on research with engineering to move NLP/GenAI solutions from experimentation to production across internal workflows.

You will work on production NLP systems, fine-tune language models, and implement RAG pipelines, embedding search, and advanced evaluation frameworks while collaborating with ML engineers and business stakeholders.

Qualifications

5–8 years of applied data science with NLP focus.
Hands-on experience with transformer architectures (BERT, GPT, T5).
Production deployment of language models.

Responsibilities

Design and build NLP and GenAI solutions for internal processes.
Fine-tune and evaluate large language models for domain apps.
Develop and iterate RAG systems and embedding pipelines.
Collaborate with stakeholders to scope problems and evaluate results.
Analyze model behavior and mitigate failure modes.
Work with ML engineers to move experiments to production.
Document methodology and data lineage for reproducibility.
Stay updated on NLP and GenAI tooling advances.

Skills

NLP

GenAI

Python

HuggingFace

LangChain

Transformer architectures

RAG

Vector databases

Research to production

Education

MS or PhD in CS/Computational Linguistics/Stats

Tools

Pinecone

Weaviate

FAISS

OpenAI API

AWS Bedrock

Azure OpenAI

Job description

Jobs / Data Scientist - NLP / Generative AI

Data Scientist - NLP / Generative AI

Full-time

About the Role

Data Scientist – NLP / Generative AILocation: Hybrid – Arlington, VirginiaEmployment Type: Full-timeBizFirst is assisting our client with the hiring of a Data Scientist specializing in natural language processing and generative AI to help the organization move from early experimentation into production-ready AI capabilities. This is a hands-on research and engineering role where you will own the design and delivery of NLP and GenAI solutions applied directly to the client’s most complex internal workflows.Our client is a mid-market professional services organization that is actively rethinking how it designs and executes its core business operations through artificial intelligence and automation. The company is building a dedicated AI capability to embed machine learning and generative AI into its most critical internal workflows – from decision support and process automation to real-time analytics and intelligent document processing.What will you doThe ideal candidate brings 5–8 years of applied data science experience with a deep specialization in NLP and a working command of modern generative AI techniques. You have built production NLP systems, worked with transformer-based architectures, and have direct experience with large language models – including fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). You are comfortable moving between research and engineering as the work demands.

Responsibilities

Design and build NLP and generative AI solutions applied to internal business processes, including document understanding, classification, summarization, and conversational AI.
Develop, fine-tune, and evaluate large language models and transformer-based architectures for domain-specific applications.
Build and iterate on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, embedding pipelines, and vector search infrastructure.
Work closely with business and operations stakeholders to scope problems, define evaluation criteria, and validate model outputs against real-world requirements.
Analyze and interpret model behavior, identify failure modes, and develop mitigation strategies to ensure reliable, responsible outputs.
Collaborate with ML engineers and platform teams to move experiments into production pipelines.
Document experimental methodology, data lineage, and model evaluations to support reproducibility and knowledge sharing.
Stay current on developments in NLP research and GenAI tooling, bringing relevant advances into the team’s work quickly.

Requirements

US Citizen or Permanent Resident authorized to work in the United States.
Experience: 5–8 years of applied data science experience with a strong focus on natural language processing and text-based systems.
NLP & GenAI: Hands-on experience with transformer architectures (BERT, GPT, T5, or similar), fine-tuning workflows, and production deployment of language models.
RAG & Embeddings: Direct experience building retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, or equivalent), and semantic search systems.
Programming: Strong Python skills; proficiency with HuggingFace Transformers, LangChain, or similar GenAI tooling.
Evaluation: Experience designing rigorous evaluation frameworks for generative models, including human evaluation, LLM-as-judge approaches, and automated benchmarking.
Preferred: Experience applying NLP in a professional services, legal, finance, or consulting domain.
Familiarity with responsible AI practices, including bias assessment, output auditing, and hallucination mitigation.
Background in information extraction, named entity recognition (NER), or document intelligence.
Experience with cloud-based GenAI services (OpenAI API, Anthropic API, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, or GCP Vertex AI).
Graduate degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Statistics, or a related field.

Benefits