Senior Data Scientist (NLP)

Placements24; Willows (CA); Hybrid; USD 60,000 - 84,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first

Home office stipend

Health benefits

Professional development

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Senior Data Scientist with a focus on NLP to join our client’s AI-led team. Based in Welkom, Free State, this remote-first role delivers production-ready NLP solutions for text classification, summarization, and entity recognition.

You will design, train, and deploy models, process large text datasets, collaborate with engineers, mentor junior data scientists, and stay up to date with NLP research.

Qualifications

• Master's or Ph.D. in a quantitative field with NLP focus
• Minimum 5 years of experience in Data Science with significant NLP work
• Strong Python and data libraries experience

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy NLP models for text classification, summarization, and NER
• Analyze large unstructured text data to extract insights
• Collaborate with engineering to integrate models into production
• Develop robust data pipelines for text preprocessing and feature engineering
• Evaluate models with A/B testing and iterate for accuracy
• Stay updated with NLP research and developments
• Communicate findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Mentor junior data scientists and contribute to data science culture

Skills

NLP

Python

Pandas/NumPy/Scikit-learn

ML/DL techniques

Data analysis

Communication

Leadership/Mentoring

Education

Master's or Ph.D. in CS/Linguistics/Data Science (NLP focus)

Tools

NLTK

spaCy

Transformers (HuggingFace)

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

About the Role

Our client, a leader in the AI & Emerging Technologies landscape, is actively seeking a Senior Data Scientist with a specialization in Natural Language Processing (NLP) to join their innovative team. This role, based in Welkom, Free State , will involve developing and deploying advanced NLP models to extract insights from vast amounts of text data, enhance product capabilities, and drive strategic decision-making. You will work on challenging projects, contributing to the creation of intelligent systems that understand and process human language. The ideal candidate will possess a strong analytical background, extensive experience in NLP techniques, and a passion for leveraging data to solve complex problems. This is a remote-first position, offering flexibility while working on cutting-edge AI applications.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and implement state-of-the-art NLP models for tasks such as text classification, sentiment analysis, entity recognition, summarization, and machine translation.
• Process and analyze large volumes of unstructured text data to identify patterns, trends, and actionable insights.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to integrate NLP models into production systems and applications.
• Develop and maintain robust data pipelines for text data preprocessing and feature engineering.
• Evaluate model performance, conduct A/B testing, and continuously iterate to improve accuracy and efficiency.
• Stay abreast of the latest research and advancements in NLP, machine learning, and deep learning.
• Communicate complex findings and technical recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Mentor junior data scientists and contribute to building a strong data science culture within the organization.

Requirements

• Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Linguistics, Data Science, or a related quantitative field with a focus on NLP.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience as a Data Scientist, with a significant portion dedicated to NLP.
• Proven experience with NLP libraries and frameworks such as NLTK, spaCy, Hugging Face Transformers, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.
• Strong understanding of machine learning algorithms, statistical modeling, and deep learning techniques applicable to NLP.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with data manipulation and analysis libraries (e.g., Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-learn).
• Experience working with large datasets and cloud-based data platforms is highly desirable.
• Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and critical thinking skills.
• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to convey technical details effectively.

Benefits

As a remote-first company, our client offers unparalleled flexibility alongside a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and retirement savings plans. Employees are provided with a stipend for home office setup and ongoing professional development opportunities, including access to online courses, workshops, and conferences. You will work with a talented, globally distributed team on challenging AI problems that have a real-world impact. This role provides significant autonomy and the opportunity to shape the direction of NLP initiatives within the organization. Join our client from anywhere and contribute to the future of AI in Welkom and beyond.