Senior Data Scientist – AI & NLP (Hybrid, London/Oxford)

About the role

We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist to design and deliver advanced AI, NLP and generative AI solutions that accelerate scientific discovery. The role is hybrid, based in London/Oxford, and focuses on building production‑ready systems that have real impact for researchers and professionals.

Key responsibilities

• Design, develop and evaluate AI/ML, NLP and generative AI models for knowledge‑discovery applications.
• Build LLM‑powered workflows and Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines for search, summarisation, question answering and evidence‑grounded insight generation.
• Implement intelligent retrieval, ranking, recommendation and decision‑support capabilities using modern orchestration frameworks.
• Integrate scientific metadata, ontologies and taxonomies into scalable AI workflows.
• Establish robust evaluation, experimentation and monitoring frameworks to ensure quality, trust and performance.
• Write production‑ready Python code and collaborate with engineering teams to deploy solutions at scale.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to drive high‑quality delivery.

Required profile

• Practical experience in data science, AI, machine learning, NLP or a related quantitative field.
• Hands‑on experience building AI/ML, NLP, generative AI and retrieval‑based systems in product‑focused environments.
• Expertise with Large Language Models, including fine‑tuning, prompt engineering, grounding strategies and responsible AI practices.
• Strong Python programming skills and solid machine‑learning fundamentals.
• Experience working with large‑scale text or content‑rich datasets and modern AI/ML frameworks.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms and modern software‑engineering practices.
• Excellent communication, collaboration and mentoring abilities.

Required skills

• Python
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Prompt Engineering
• Fine‑tuning LLMs
• Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Generative AI
• Machine Learning
• Semantic Search
• Vector Search
• Hybrid Search
• Cloud Platforms
• Software Engineering Practices

What we offer

• Healthy work‑life balance with flexible hybrid working.
• Opportunities to impact scientific research through cutting‑edge AI technologies.