Senior Lead Data Scientist - AI/ML Leadership (Remote)

Placements24; Stellenbosch; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Performance bonuses

Remote-first work policy

Job summary

Placements24 seeks a visionary Lead Data Scientist specializing in AI/ML to drive innovation for a global financial organization. This senior remote role leads a team through ideation, development, deployment, and monitoring of predictive models, with a focus on governance and ethical AI.

You will thrive in a fast-paced, remote-first environment, collaborating with stakeholders and staying ahead of AI/ML research while applying deep expertise to financial services use cases.

Qualifications

• PhD or Master’s in CS, statistics, mathematics, artificial intelligence, or related field.
• Minimum 7 years in data science with at least 2 years in a lead/management role.
• Proven track record deploying complex AI/ML models in production environments.
• Strong programming with Python or R and ML libraries.
• Experience with big data technologies (Spark, Hadoop) and cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP).

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, and deployment of advanced AI/ML models for predictive analytics and NLP.
• Mentor and manage a team of data scientists and ML engineers.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify AI/ML opportunities delivering business value.
• Oversee data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model training pipelines.
• Ensure model governance, ethics, and data privacy in all projects.
• Communicate findings clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

Skills

Python

R

Machine Learning

Leadership

Communication

Education

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

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Scikit-learn

Spark

Hadoop

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Placements24 seeks a visionary Lead Data Scientist specializing in AI/ML to drive innovation for a global financial organization. This senior remote role leads a team through ideation, development, deployment, and monitoring of predictive models, with a focus on governance and ethical AI.

You will thrive in a fast-paced, remote-first environment, collaborating with stakeholders and staying ahead of AI/ML research while applying deep expertise to financial services use cases.