Lead Applied AI Scientist - Production AI & MLOps Leader

Lumen; Columbia (SC); On-site; USD 152,000 - 253,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Life insurance

Voluntary lifestyle benefits

Job summary

Lumen is seeking highly technical, product‑minded Senior Lead Applied AI Scientists to design, build, deploy, and continuously improve production‑scale AI solutions of all varieties: agents, generative, ML, etc. In this role, you will partner with business, product, engineering, and technology leaders to translate high‑value opportunities into AI‑powered solutions that deliver measurable business impact.

You will combine deep expertise in AI and machine learning with strong software engineering,

Qualifications

• Seven+ years in applied AI, ML, or data science with production deployments.
• Proven track record delivering AI solutions driving measurable outcomes.
• Deep expertise in ML, statistics, experimentation, and modern AI techniques.
• Hands-on experience building LLM, RAG, agentic, and ML solutions.
• Strong experience with AI evaluation, model performance optimization, and production monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy production AI solutions end-to-end.
• Partner with business and product teams to define success metrics.
• Develop AI systems using ML, generative AI, retrieval, and agents.
• Define evaluation frameworks to improve quality, safety, performance, and cost.
• Collaborate with Engineering to deliver scalable ML deployments (MLOps/LLMOps).
• Contribute reusable AI frameworks and standards for enterprise adoption.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship on AI initiatives.

Skills

Applied AI experience

AI project delivery

Machine learning expertise

Statistical analysis

Experimentation

Python programming

MLOps/LLMOps familiarity

Communication with stakeholders

Education

Master's degree or PhD in CS/AI/ML/Statistics

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Hugging Face

MLflow

Job description

Lumen is seeking highly technical, product‑minded Senior Lead Applied AI Scientists to design, build, deploy, and continuously improve production‑scale AI solutions of all varieties: agents, generative, ML, etc. In this role, you will partner with business, product, engineering, and technology leaders to translate high‑value opportunities into AI‑powered solutions that deliver measurable business impact.

You will combine deep expertise in AI and machine learning with strong software engineering,