Principal Data Scientist: NLP & Generative AI Leader

Placements24; Rustenburg; On-site; ZAR 1,500,000 - 2,100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and dental coverage

Generous leave policy

Learning & development opportunities

Access to advanced AI infrastructure

Career advancement opportunities

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Principal Data Scientist based in Rustenburg to lead NLP and Generative AI initiatives. You will drive research, design advanced models, and mentor a team of data scientists and engineers in a collaborative office setting.

The role requires a PhD/Master’s, 10+ years in data science with NLP expertise, and strong Python and ML library skills. You will work closely with product and engineering teams on high-impact AI projects in a secure, ethical framework.

Qualifications

• PhD or Master’s in Computer Science, AI, Computational Linguistics, Statistics, or related field.
• 10+ years of data science experience with NLP and Generative AI.
• Proven track record leading complex data science projects from ideation to production.
• Proficient in Python and ML/NLP libraries (TF, PyTorch, Transformers, spaCy, NLTK).
• Strong statistical, ML, and deep learning expertise; hands-on with LLMs and fine-tuning.
• Experience with cloud platforms and big data technologies (Spark).
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills; mentoring capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead research, design, and production-grade NLP models (classification, sentiment, NER, QA).
• Develop and deploy generative AI models (LLMs, text-to-image) for business applications.
• Architect and manage large NLP data pipelines for data quality and integrity.
• Conduct feature engineering, evaluation, and performance optimization.
• Mentor junior data scientists and engineers; promote best practices.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and stakeholders to define scope.
• Stay updated with NLP and AI advancements; integrate new techniques.
• Present methodologies and results to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ensure ethical AI development and address biases and societal impacts.

Skills

Leadership

Mentoring

Analytical thinking

Communication

Education

PhD or Master’s in CS/AI/CL/Statistics

Tools

Python

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Hugging Face Transformers

spaCy

NLTK

AWS/Azure/GCP

Spark

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a Principal Data Scientist based in Rustenburg to lead NLP and Generative AI initiatives. You will drive research, design advanced models, and mentor a team of data scientists and engineers in a collaborative office setting.

The role requires a PhD/Master’s, 10+ years in data science with NLP expertise, and strong Python and ML library skills. You will work closely with product and engineering teams on high-impact AI projects in a secure, ethical framework.