Senior Data Scientist

Lever, Inc.; South Africa; Remote; ZAR 2,530,000 - 3,413,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote work

Global collaboration

Job summary

Lever, Inc. seeks a Senior Data Scientist in a fully remote role based in South Africa. You will design and deploy real-time ML services with noisy, unlabeled data to improve browser and device identification.

The role blends research, software engineering, and data science across an international team. You will own projects end-to-end—from exploration and experimentation to production deployment—while shaping engineering practices and data-driven decision making.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in machine learning, data science and backend-related engineering.
• Strong ML fundamentals and statistical methods; real-time ML service development experience.
• Proficiency with supervised learning and high-cardinality categorical data.
• Experience with Go and backend development is a plus; fluent English.
• Excellent coding and software engineering skills; strong SQL capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Develop data-driven algorithms to improve browser and device identification.
• Design supervised, semi-supervised and unsupervised ML approaches for real-time inference.
• Own DS initiatives end-to-end from problem definition to production deployment.
• Collaborate with data science and engineering to productionize services.
• Participate in on-call rotation and advocate data-driven culture.

Skills

Machine learning fundamentals

SQL

Python

Git

CI/CD

Shell scripting

Real-time services

Tools

ClickHouse

Snowflake

BigQuery

dbt

Superset/Tableau/Looker

Pinecone/FAISS/Qdrant

Job description

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Data Scientist based in South Africa.

This is a senior, hands-on data science role focused on improving the accuracy and intelligence of a high-volume, real-time identification platform. You'll work with complex, noisy, and often unlabeled data to develop machine learning approaches that distinguish browsers and devices with greater precision. The role combines advanced machine learning, statistical analysis, experimentation, and backend engineering in a highly technical environment. You'll own projects from initial research and experimentation through production deployment and integration with real-time services. You'll also help shape engineering practices, data-driven decision-making, and effective approaches to machine learning across the wider team. This is a fully remote opportunity suited to someone who enjoys solving challenging problems where research, software engineering, and applied ML meet.

Accountabilities

• Develop data-driven algorithms using raw, noisy, and unlabeled data to improve browser and device identification capabilities.

• Design and implement supervised, semi-supervised, and unsupervised machine learning approaches, including methods for high-cardinality categorical data.

• Own data science initiatives end to end, from problem definition and experimentation through production deployment and integration with real-time services.

• Design experiments and technical solutions for real-time inference, model-to-service integration, training automation, and other machine learning engineering challenges.

• Conduct exploratory data analysis to investigate business and technical questions, identify anomalies, and evaluate model and dataset performance.

• Develop practical approaches for collecting and evaluating data when labeled datasets are limited or unavailable.

• Contribute to an engineering-focused, data-driven culture by sharing tools, methodologies, and effective data science practices with colleagues.

• Collaborate across data science and engineering functions to turn machine learning concepts into reliable, production-ready services.

• Participate in a shared on-call rotation, with schedules communicated in advance and coverage designed to minimize disruption outside normal working hours.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience spanning machine learning, data science, and backend development or closely related engineering disciplines.

• Advanced knowledge of machine learning fundamentals and statistical methodologies.

• Strong practical experience with supervised learning, including gradient boosting and approaches for high-cardinality categorical data.

• Hands-on experience with semi-supervised and unsupervised learning techniques.

• Strong exploratory data analysis and creative problem-solving skills, particularly when working with incomplete, noisy, or unlabeled datasets.

• Proven experience developing real-time machine learning services, including model inference and integration between models and production applications.

• Ability to transform machine learning models into minimum viable real-time web services and production-ready solutions.

• Excellent coding and software engineering skills, including strong SQL capabilities and familiarity with Git, CI/CD pipelines, IDEs, and shell scripting.

• Strong communication skills and fluent English, with the ability to collaborate effectively in a distributed international environment.

• A research mindset and academic background are advantageous.

• Experience with Go and backend development is a plus.

• Familiarity with analytical data platforms such as ClickHouse, Snowflake, or BigQuery is beneficial.

• Experience with data transformation frameworks such as dbt, visualization tools such as Superset, Tableau, or Looker, or vector databases such as Pinecone, FAISS, or Qdrant is a plus.

• Experience building embedding-based search systems is advantageous.

• Familiarity with technologies such as Go, SQL, advanced ML frameworks, ClickHouse, dbt, and AWS is beneficial.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, with the source role indicating a US cash compensation range of $152,000-$205,000 USD; compensation ranges are location-specific and may differ for candidates based in India.

• Fully remote working environment.

• Opportunity to work on challenging machine learning problems involving real-time systems, large-scale data, and advanced device intelligence.

• Exposure to modern machine learning, data engineering, backend development, and cloud infrastructure technologies.

• Opportunity to contribute to technical strategy and influence engineering and data science practices.

• Collaboration with a globally distributed team.

• Inclusive environment that values diverse experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds.

• Candidates must be authorized to work from their home location; visa sponsorship is not provided.

• Participation in a shared on-call rotation with advance scheduling and an effort to balance coverage fairly while minimizing off-hours disruption.