Lead Data Scientist

Overview

As Lead Data Scientist at Kainos, you architect and deliver cutting-edge AI solutions using state-of-the-art ML, generative, and agentic AI. You will drive adoption of modern AI frameworks, AI operations best practices, and scalable cloud-native architectures. You’ll mentor peers, lead client projects in plain language, and champion responsible AI throughout delivery. This fast-paced role blends hands-on technical leadership with people development and collaboration across a diverse team.

Responsibilities

• Architect and deliver advanced AI solutions leveraging ML, generative, and agentic AI technologies
• Drive adoption of modern AI frameworks, AIOps, and scalable cloud-native architectures
• Lead hands-on technical work and translate business challenges into trustworthy AI outcomes
• Mentor and develop junior staff, fostering innovation and engineering excellence
• Collaborate with customers to define requirements in non-technical language and manage client projects
• Provide direction and leadership to solve challenging problems with the team
• Support responsible AI practices including model interpretability and ethics
• Balance fast-paced delivery with ongoing learning and technology exploration

Key requirements

• Deep understanding of AI/ML models (time series, supervised/unsupervised, RL, LLMs)
• Experience with prompt engineering, RAG, and agentic AI
• Strong Python skills and software engineering practices (CI/CD, testing, code reviews)
• Expertise in data engineering for AI (large-scale, unstructured, multimodal data)
• Understanding of responsible AI, interpretability, and ethics
• Strong interpersonal and client-facing skills to elicit requirements in plain language
• Experience in managing, coaching, and developing junior team members
• Active UK Government Security Clearance

• leadership
• communication
• collaboration
• PyTorch
• TensorFlow
• scikit-learn

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