Principal Data Scientist — Enterprise AI & ML Leader

Georgia Power Company; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Southern Company in Atlanta, GA seeks a Principal Data Scientist to lead enterprise data and customer analytics, developing production‑ready models and responsible AI capabilities. The role blends deep data science with software engineering, guiding model development and communicating insights for strategic decisions.

The position requires senior technical leadership across teams, establishment of standards, and mentorship of data scientists, data engineers, and business partners to deliver

Qualifications

• Master's degree in Data Science, CS, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, AI, ML or related field.
• 6+ years with large diverse datasets and translating analytics to business value.
• Senior technical lead or principal-level contributor experience.
• Experience deploying, monitoring, and improving analytics/models in enterprise environments.
• Experience in energy, utility, or regulated industries preferred.

Responsibilities

• Identify high-value data science opportunities with stakeholders.
• Develop production-grade solutions using Databricks, Python, PySpark, SQL and cloud tech.
• Design solutions interacting with large language models (prompting, retrieval-augmented generation, and grounding).
• Establish rigorous experimentation and evaluation methods for model validation and production readiness.
• Define data science, MLOps, responsible AI, and model documentation standards.
• Monitor performance, drift, and recommend retraining or redesigns.
• Collaborate with data engineers, architects, analysts, and security/governance teams.
• Create reusable code and documentation to accelerate AI delivery.
• Communicate methods and results to executives and business partners.
• Provide mentorship and technical leadership to practitioners.
• Evaluate emerging methods/tools and prototype when beneficial.
• Build internal/external partnerships to advance capabilities.

Skills

Python

PySpark

Databricks

Spark

ML lifecycle

NLP

LLMs / Generative AI

MLOps / LLMOps

SQL

Data governance

Cloud platforms

Model evaluation

Education

Master's degree in Data Science or related field

Tools

Databricks

Apache Spark

Python

ETL / Data pipelines

Job description

Southern Company in Atlanta, GA seeks a Principal Data Scientist to lead enterprise data and customer analytics, developing production‑ready models and responsible AI capabilities. The role blends deep data science with software engineering, guiding model development and communicating insights for strategic decisions.

The position requires senior technical leadership across teams, establishment of standards, and mentorship of data scientists, data engineers, and business partners to deliver