Senior Data Scientist | S4 | Chief Data & AI Office | Milton Keynes

Overview

In this Senior Data Scientist role, you will lead customer-facing AI initiatives across contact centres and digital channels. You’ll fuse technical leadership with insights into customer journeys and operating performance to drive value. You’ll own the UK SanTalk product, shaping its vision, roadmap and rollout in a regulated environment. You’ll guide cross-functional teams and ensure scalable, secure, production-ready solutions that deliver measurable impact. This is a chance to influence Santander UK’s data & AI strategy and real-world customer outcomes.

Pay / Benefits

• salary_range 76,000–114,000 per annum
• 30 days holiday + bank holidays (31 days after 5 years)
• £6,000 car allowance
• private medical insurance
• life and income protection insurance
• employee share plans

Responsibilities

• Act as UK Product Owner for SanTalk, defining vision, strategy, roadmap and backlog for customer-facing AI solutions
• Translate UK business needs and user feedback into prioritized AI use cases and delivery plans
• Represent Santander UK in Group forums to influence SanTalk roadmap and feature proposals
• Own end-to-end delivery, UK rollout and ongoing operation of SanTalk solutions
• Provide technical direction to Data Scientists, Engineers, MLOps and Product Owners to ensure production-ready solutions
• Define success measures and optimise outcomes through monitoring, experimentation and benefits tracking
• Manage delivery priorities, governance, dependencies and risks in a regulated environment with embedded responsible AI and model governance
• Build alignment across senior stakeholders and escalate challenges with practical recommendations

Key requirements

• 6-8 years in data science, applied AI or advanced analytics with leadership of AI solutions from concept to production
• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Engineering or related field
• English language proficiency; Spanish or cross-border experience preferred
• Strong knowledge of machine learning, NLP, generative AI, experimentation and model evaluation
• Experience owning a digital/AI product lifecycle (strategy, roadmap, backlog, release, live service)
• Experience designing/conducting conversational AI or customer-facing AI solutions; Sierra or similar platform preferred
• Understanding of contact-centre operations, UK regulations, customer journeys and production monitoring
• Soft leadership and stakeholder management skills; ability to present to senior audiences

• Technical leadership and solution walkthroughs
• Multi-priority management with concise reporting
• Vision shaping, business case challenge and value tracking
• Machine learning
• Natural language processing
• Generative AI

…