Senior Lead Data Scientist — Hands-on & Mentorship

WatersEdge Solutions; Johannesburg; Remote; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,900,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellness initiatives

Home-office support

Learning opportunities

Equity participation

Travel to Johannesburg/Cape Town

Job summary

WatersEdge Solutions is seeking a Lead Data Scientist for a senior, hands-on leadership role to own delivery, mentor team members and shape the evolution of a sophisticated data science function. You'll remain deeply technical, delivering production-grade Python solutions, building AI-powered pipelines and analytics.

The role involves Python, PySpark, Delta Lake, Azure Synapse, Trino, Power BI, Kubernetes and FastAPI, with remote work from South Africa and occasional travel to Johannesburg or

Qualifications

• 7+ years' experience across data science, data analytics or data warehousing
• 2+ years' technical or engineering leadership experience
• Senior-level expertise across machine learning, statistical modelling and AI system design in production environments
• Experience deploying, monitoring and retraining production models
• Advanced Python skills
• Strong hands-on experience with Jupyter Notebooks, pandas, NumPy and scikit-learn
• Experience with Delta Lake or comparable lakehouse architectures
• Experience with PySpark, feature stores, training-data versioning and schema evolution
• Strong data warehouse expertise using Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure SQL, T-SQL and ANSI SQL
• Strong analytics and visualisation experience using Power BI and Python-based visualisation or interactive analysis tools
• Experience mentoring Data Scientists, owning technical delivery and communicating with senior stakeholders
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills
• Bachelor's degree in a STEM discipline or equivalent professional experience

Responsibilities

• Shape, prioritise and own the analytical roadmap and backlog
• Take ownership of customer analytical delivery from problem definition to insights
• Translate business questions into defined analytical problems and measurable criteria
• Present findings to senior stakeholders and challenge conclusions when unsupported
• Develop production-grade Python using modern software engineering practices
• Apply warehouse and lakehouse best practices across data grain, joins and provenance
• Work with matched, indirect, aggregated and imperfect datasets
• Apply techniques including weighted binning, dependency and importance measures, and validation controls
• Use Claude Code and LLM workflows throughout the delivery lifecycle
• Act as deputy to the Head of Data Science when required
• Mentor Data Scientists and support team delivery and technical development
• Represent the Data Science function with internal and external stakeholders
• Potentially lead an Agile delivery squad within the wider platform environment

Skills

Python

Jupyter Notebooks

Pandas

NumPy

Scikit-learn

PySpark

Delta Lake

Azure Synapse

Power BI

Mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in STEM

Tools

Kubernetes

FastAPI

Claude Code

Job description

WatersEdge Solutions is seeking a Lead Data Scientist for a senior, hands-on leadership role to own delivery, mentor team members and shape the evolution of a sophisticated data science function. You'll remain deeply technical, delivering production-grade Python solutions, building AI-powered pipelines and analytics.

The role involves Python, PySpark, Delta Lake, Azure Synapse, Trino, Power BI, Kubernetes and FastAPI, with remote work from South Africa and occasional travel to Johannesburg or