Lead AI Scientist: Optimization & Decision Intelligence

Equinor; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Equinor seeks a Principal Data Scientist to lead AI initiatives in Houston within Design, Software and Data Science. The role bridges traditional ML, optimization, RL, and agentic AI with safe, scalable delivery for operations, engineering and energy markets.

You will guide problem framing, scope, and stakeholder alignment while hands-on developing robust AI solutions. You will mentor colleagues, drive end-to-end deliveries, and ensure responsible AI practices across safety, ethics, and

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in operations research, applied mathematics, computer science, data science, control/automation, engineering or a related discipline.
• Solid experience in production-grade AI/ML delivery including data pipelines, model evaluation, software engineering practices, MLOps, cloud platforms and secure deployment.
• Ability to turn ambiguous business questions into analytical problems, delivery plans, decision recommendations and measurable outcomes.
• Strong depth in machine learning, mathematical optimization, reinforcement learning, decision science, or advanced AI, with ability to solve highly complex tasks.
• Experience leading technical tasks or work packages with multiple contributors and stakeholders in industrial/enterprise environments.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills with ability to influence and facilitate decisions.

Responsibilities

• Drive complex AI deliveries from problem framing to implemented solutions with clear scope and stakeholder alignment.
• Provide professional support connecting optimization, reinforcement learning, forecasting and agentic AI to practical decisions.
• Design for bounded autonomy, confidence signaling, human oversight and auditable decisions to manage uncertainty.
• Improve performance, reliability and cost efficiency across development, evaluation and inference (batching, caching, scalable serving, model routing).
• When relevant, combine agentic AI with optimization or RL for planning, scheduling and decision support.
• Coach and advise teams on highly complex AI topics and adoption of new technology.

Skills

ML & AI expertise

Optimization & RL

MLOps & pipelines

Stakeholder communication

Education

Master's or PhD in OR/Math/CS/Data Science/Eng

Tools

Azure

Databricks

Kubernetes

Python

CI/CD

MLflow

Job description

Equinor seeks a Principal Data Scientist to lead AI initiatives in Houston within Design, Software and Data Science. The role bridges traditional ML, optimization, RL, and agentic AI with safe, scalable delivery for operations, engineering and energy markets.

You will guide problem framing, scope, and stakeholder alignment while hands-on developing robust AI solutions. You will mentor colleagues, drive end-to-end deliveries, and ensure responsible AI practices across safety, ethics, and