Lead Data Scientist - Remote AI & Production Analytics Lead

Recruit-It; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working arrangements

Comprehensive benefits

Team culture

Job summary

Recruit-It is seeking a Lead Data Scientist to serve as second-in-command to the Head of Data Science. This fully remote role, based in South Africa, centers on privacy-preserving models and AI-augmented pipelines.

You will drive the analytical roadmap, deliver end-to-end analytics, and advance Python-driven research and production delivery. You will mentor team members, shape architecture with Delta Lake/PySpark, and collaborate with senior stakeholders while occasionally traveling to

Qualifications

• Senior data science expertise in production ML systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the analytical roadmap and backlog prioritization.
• Deliver end-to-end customer analytics.
• Write production-grade Python code.
• Apply warehouse and Lakehouse best practices.
• Use Claude Code and AI tools throughout delivery.
• Generate insights from multi-party data with validation.
• Support Data Science leadership and mentorship.
• Occasional travel to Johannesburg or Cape Town for in-person meetings.

Skills

Python

Machine Learning

Statistical Modelling

AI System Design

Leadership

English Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in STEM

Tools

Delta Lake

PySpark

Jupyter Notebooks

Power BI

Azure Synapse

SQL

T-SQL

Pandas

Job description

Recruit-It is seeking a Lead Data Scientist to serve as second-in-command to the Head of Data Science. This fully remote role, based in South Africa, centers on privacy-preserving models and AI-augmented pipelines.

You will drive the analytical roadmap, deliver end-to-end analytics, and advance Python-driven research and production delivery. You will mentor team members, shape architecture with Delta Lake/PySpark, and collaborate with senior stakeholders while occasionally traveling to