Senior Data Scientist

Penny The Recruiter; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 800,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

A recruitment agency in South Africa is seeking a skilled AI Solutions Lead to develop and implement LLM and generative AI technologies. Candidates should have over 5 years of data science experience, preferably in generative AI, and expertise in programming languages such as R and Python. This role offers the chance to work on innovative projects that drive the company's global strategies forward.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in data science focusing on generative AI.
• Hands-on experience with Big Data systems preferred.
• Deep understanding of LLMs and experience with models like GPTs, LLaMa, Gemini.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and deployment of LLM-based solutions.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to solve business problems using LLMs.
• Conduct research into the latest machine learning algorithms.

Skills

Expert in R programming

Expert in Python programming

Expert in Scala programming

Strong analytical skills

Data manipulation (SQL)

Experience with Git

Understanding of Big Data principles

Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure)

Familiarity with machine learning tools

Education

Honours or Masters in Computer Science

Honours or Masters in Data Science, Statistics, or Applied Mathematics

Tools

Google TensorFlow

Whisper

DeepSpeech

OpenAI

HuggingFace

Job description

What you will be doing :

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of LLM- and generative AI-based solutions that address large-scale and complex problems and materially drive the companys global product offerings and strategy forward.
• Collaborate with product owners, project managers, and executive stakeholders to identify and prioritise business problems that can be solved with LLMs.
• Conduct desktop research into the state-of-the-art in LLMs and Generative AI and apply findings to real-world applications (either requested by business or suggested by yourself).
• Conduct research and development of speech-to-text and audio-based language models, integrating with LLM pipelines where applicable.
• Conduct experimental research on the use of LLMs in real-world company applications to ensure that design and development decisions are made scientifically, and optimise for and balance all business requirements. These include accuracy, scalability, efficiency, reliability, safety, and cost-effectiveness.
• Translate strategic direction into technical product definitions and roadmaps.
• Participate actively in internal and external communities discussing and designing policies for the ethical use of AI, and ensure your teams work meets ethical AI standards.
• Contribute substantially to a culture of innovation, leading the prototyping and development of novel methodologies and approaches. Provide strong thought leadership in this regard.
• Communicate complex technical concepts to executives and non-technical stakeholders effectively.
• Demonstrate strong emotional intelligence by understanding and uplifting team members, and skilfully managing challenging situations with composure.
• Advise other teams in the business on best practice based on your experience.
• Mining large structured and unstructured datasets to find new insights to inform operational efficiency and member- delight interaction strategies
• Research and application of the most up to date machine learning algorithms and AI techniques
• Present data and model findings in a way that provides actionable insights to business users
• Monitoring model performance

What we are looking for :

• Honours or Masters degree in Computer Science with solid experience in statistical modelling, data mining and machine learning, OR
• Honours or Masters degree in either Data Science, Statistics, or Applied Mathematics with some experience in software engineering, computer science or working with bigdisparate sets of data
• 5+ years of experience in data science, with a recent focus on generative AI.
• Expert in data science programming languages such as R, Python, Scala
• Expert in data manipulation skills including SQL to extract, transform and load data
• Experience in interactive data exploration and data-driven story telling
• Understanding and application of Big Data and distributed computing principles
• Hands on experience with Big Data systems will be preferred
• Strong analytical and statistical knowledge with an understanding of the latest machine learning algorithms for both structured and unstructured data
• Ability to adapt to emerging technologies and tools
• Proficiency in version control systems such as Git for collaborative coding and maintaining code integrity
• Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP, Azure, or AWS
• Experience with tools such as Whisper, DeepSpeech, OpenAI or HuggingFace
• Experience in sourcing and combining data from both structured and unstructured sources
• Experience with Google Tensor flow
• Familiarity with MLops practices and tools
• Proven tack record of Data Science or AI project delivery
• Deep understanding of LLMs and experience with models like GPTs, LLaMa, Gemini etc

Please note that if you do not hear from us within 3 weeks, consider your application unsuccessful.