Lead Data Scientist, Insurance Analytics — Remote-First

Placements24; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 900,000 - 1,700,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Health benefits

Pension plan

Remote-first

Professional development

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking an experienced Lead Data Scientist in Cape Town to spearhead advanced analytics and guide a team of data scientists. You will transform raw data into strategic insights for product development, underwriting, and customer engagement in a vibrant insurance market.

The role emphasizes leading ML initiatives, building robust data pipelines, and driving data-driven decisions with stakeholders across the business.

Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science, or a related quantitative field.
• 7+ years of professional experience in data science, with at least 2 years in a leadership or senior role.
• Proven track record of deploying machine learning models in production, preferably in financial services or insurance.
• Expertise in Python or R and libraries such as scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Pandas.
• Strong understanding of SQL/NoSQL and big data platforms (Spark, Hadoop).
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, Azure, GCP) is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of data scientists and analysts from concept to deployment.
• Develop and implement advanced ML models for predictive analytics, fraud detection, segmentation, and risk assessment in insurance.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify data-driven opportunities improving efficiency and profitability.
• Design data pipelines and analytical frameworks to support R&D.
• Communicate complex findings to non-technical audiences with visualizations and presentations.
• Stay updated with data science, ML, and AI advances and assess applicability to insurance.

Skills

Leadership

Data science

ML engineering

Communication

Stakeholder mgmt

Education

Master's or PhD in CS/Stats/Data Science

Tools

Python

R

scikit-learn

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Pandas

SQL

NoSQL

Spark

Hadoop

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Placements24 is seeking an experienced Lead Data Scientist in Cape Town to spearhead advanced analytics and guide a team of data scientists. You will transform raw data into strategic insights for product development, underwriting, and customer engagement in a vibrant insurance market.

The role emphasizes leading ML initiatives, building robust data pipelines, and driving data-driven decisions with stakeholders across the business.