Data Scientist III

LexisNexis; Durban; On-site; ZAR 500 000 - 650 000; Full time

Job summary

A global information services firm is seeking a Data Scientist III in Durban to design and enhance NLP systems for legal research and AI solutions. The role involves collaborating with engineers to improve data retrieval and model quality. Candidates should possess an undergraduate degree with 2+ years of relevant experience, particularly in machine learning and NLP. The position offers flexible working hours and comprehensive benefits, promoting a healthy work/life balance.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Medical Aid

Retirement Plan with Risk Benefits

Modern family benefits

Study Leave

Qualifications

• At least 2 years of relevant work experience.
• Experience in Data engineering, Data analysis, or Machine learning.
• Formal training in machine learning methods.

Responsibilities

• Design and improve NLP and retrieval systems.
• Collaborate with Software Engineers for high-quality solutions.
• Evaluate and improve model relevance and quality.

Skills

Python

Natural Language Processing

Feature engineering

Model training

Evaluation

Data cleaning

Machine learning algorithms

Scala or Java

Education

Undergraduate degree in relevant field

Master's degree in relevant field

Tools

spaCy

TensorFlow

Keras

PyTorch

BERT

Postgres

Elasticsearch

Job description

Overview

Are you ready for the next step in your engineering career? LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 150 countries with 11,800 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. Our company has been a long-time leader in deploying AI and advanced technologies to the legal market to improve productivity and transform the overall business and practice of law, deploying ethical and powerful generative AI solutions with a flexible, multi-model approach that prioritizes using the best model from today’s top model creators for each individual legal use case.

About the role: A Data Scientist III should understand best practices and processes and be able to execute them independently, reviewing requirements and results with supervisors. Individuals in this role should work with managers to define project scope, and then execute the necessary methods to develop, test and deliver outcomes. In this role, you will design and improve NLP and retrieval systems that power legal research and AI-assisted workflows. You will contribute directly to embedding-based search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and large language model (LLM) quality improvements, with a strong focus on evaluation, relevance, and measurable impact. Collaboration is central: you will work together with Software Engineers and AI Platform teams to ensure scalable, reliable, and high-quality solutions.

Responsibilities

• NLP pipelines for legal text ingestion and processing
• Embedding-based retrieval and search relevance
• Improving response quality in RAG/LLM systems
• Model evaluation and quality measurement
• Collaborating closely with Software Engineers and AI Platform teams
• Primarily provide support to more senior Data Scientists
• Pulls data, cleans data, builds and maintains existing models
• Participates in result presentation to internal stakeholders

Requirements

• At least an undergraduate degree in relevant field and 2+ years of relevant work experience Or a master's degree in a relevant field
• At least 2+ years’ experience in any of the roles (Data engineer, Data analyst, Machine learning engineer)
• Python (2 years exp.)
• Feature engineering, model training, evaluation, and error analysis
• Formal training in machine learning: dimensionality reduction, clustering, embeddings, and sequence classification algorithms
• Practical experience in Natural Language Processing methods and libraries such as spaCy, word2vec, TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, Flair, BERT, large language models and prompt engineering
• Strong Python, Scala or Java background
• Knowledge of relational and NoSQL databases (e.g. Postgres, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, AWS Neptune)

Benefits

• Working flexible hours - flexing the times when you work in the day to help you fit everything in and work when you are the most productive
• Medical Aid
• Retirement Plan inclusive of Risk Benefits (Disability, Critical Illness, Life Cover & Funeral Cover)
• Modern family benefits, including adoption and surrogacy
• Study Leave

Work in a way that works for you

We promote a healthy work/life balance across the organization. We offer an appealing working prospect for our people. With numerous wellbeing initiatives, shared parental leave, study assistance and sabbaticals, we will help you meet your immediate responsibilities and your long-term goals.

About the Business

LexisNexis Legal & Professional provides legal, regulatory, and business information and analytics that help customers increase their productivity, improve decision-making, achieve better outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis and Nexis services.

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