Lead AI Scientist: Production ML & Knowledge Graphs

Pearson; Olympia (WA); Remote; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Pearson is seeking a strategic and hands-on Lead Specialist- AI Scientist to design, deploy, and scale production AI/ML capabilities powering learner intelligence, knowledge graphs, and personalized experiences. You will lead Generative AI, LLM, RAG, and agentic AI solutions from concept to production with a strong execution mindset.

The role bridges AI research, data science, software engineering, and product delivery, mentoring engineers and data scientists while ensuring safety, reliability,

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building and deploying production AI/ML systems, including cloud-native applications and MLOps practices.
• Hands-on experience with foundation models and modern AI frameworks.
• Proficiency in Python and modern software engineering practices, including APIs, testing, CI/CD, version control, and production operations.
• Experience designing scalable AI platforms, services, and deployment architectures in AWS or similar cloud environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, deployment, and operation of production AI capabilities supporting learner intelligence, personalization, recommendations, knowledge graphs, and AI-powered learning experiences.
• Design and deliver Generative AI, LLM, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agentic AI solutions that create measurable product and business impact.
• Build reusable AI platform capabilities, services, APIs, and workflows that accelerate AI adoption across Pearson products.
• Own the end-to-end AI delivery lifecycle, from experimentation and prototyping through deployment, monitoring, evaluation, and continuous improvement.
• Establish scalable MLOps and AIOps practices for model training, deployment, observability, governance, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Design, Learning Science, and Data Science teams to identify opportunities and deliver AI-powered capabilities.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and architectures while balancing quality, safety, latency, and cost.
• Establish best practices for responsible AI, model evaluation, prompt engineering, and AI governance.
• Mentor engineers and data scientists to elevate AI engineering capabilities across the organization.
• Communicate technical strategy, architecture decisions, trade-offs, risks, and outcomes to stakeholders.

Skills

Python

MLOps

Generative AI

LLMs

Knowledge graphs

Agentic AI

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Engineering/Data Science/AI

Tools

OpenAI

Anthropic

Bedrock

Azure OpenAI

LangChain

Semantic Kernel

LangGraph

vector databases

Job description

Pearson is seeking a strategic and hands-on Lead Specialist- AI Scientist to design, deploy, and scale production AI/ML capabilities powering learner intelligence, knowledge graphs, and personalized experiences. You will lead Generative AI, LLM, RAG, and agentic AI solutions from concept to production with a strong execution mindset.

The role bridges AI research, data science, software engineering, and product delivery, mentoring engineers and data scientists while ensuring safety, reliability,