Remote Principal Data Scientist — Mining Analytics Leader

Placements24; Sandton; Hybrid; ZAR 2,600,000 - 4,500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Annual performance bonus

Remote work flexibility

Health, dental, vision insurance

Professional development budget

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a fully remote Principal Data Scientist to spearhead advanced analytics across mining operations. You will lead predictive maintenance, ore grade optimization, safety analytics, and supply chain efficiency using ML and statistical modeling.

Mentors juniors and collaborates with engineers, geologists, and operations managers, communicating complex findings to executives. This remote-first role requires a strong track record of independent project leadership, cloud

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in a quantitative field (MS/PhD).
• ≥10 years in data science with ML impact.
• Proficiency in Python or R and ML libraries.
• Strong SQL and big data tech (Spark/Hadoop).
• Cloud experience (AWS/Azure/GCP) and data viz basics.
• Leadership and mentoring in remote teams.
• Experience in mining or related industry is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, and deployment of ML models for mining ops.
• Identify challenges where data science adds value.
• Extract, clean, and transform large datasets from sensors/logs.
• Develop predictive, anomaly, forecasting, and optimization models.
• Validate models and present insights to stakeholders.
• Mentor junior data scientists and analysts.
• Collaborate with IT, engineering, operations, and mgmt.
• Stay current with DS/AI advances and apply to mining.
• Develop data pipelines and MLOps for scalable deployment.
• Contribute to data strategy and analytics roadmap.
• Present findings to senior leadership for decision-making.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Remote work

Python

R

ML/Stat modeling

Time series

Data visualization

Presenting to execs

Education

Master's or PhD in CS/Statistics/DS/Math

Tools

Python

R

scikit-learn

TensorFlow

PyTorch

SQL

Spark

Hadoop

AWS

Azure

GCP

Tableau

Power BI

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a fully remote Principal Data Scientist to spearhead advanced analytics across mining operations. You will lead predictive maintenance, ore grade optimization, safety analytics, and supply chain efficiency using ML and statistical modeling.

Mentors juniors and collaborates with engineers, geologists, and operations managers, communicating complex findings to executives. This remote-first role requires a strong track record of independent project leadership, cloud