Senior Data Scientist - AI Practice Team in Cheshire, Warrington

We are seeking an exceptional Senior Data Scientist to join us full-time in our Artificial Intelligence (AI) Practice Team, Europe. In this role, you will lead the design and delivery of analytics and machine learning solutions across policy, data, and document-centric AI engagements, working with complex real-world datasets from industrial and asset-intensive domains. You will partner closely with consultants, domain experts, and junior data scientists to turn client data into robust models, reusable assets, and decision‑ready insights. Based in Warrington or London England with some remote flexibility, you will help shape our technical approaches, uplift data science practices, and ensure solutions are production‑aware and business‑relevant.

What You Will Do:

• Lead the preparation, exploration, and analysis of client data (tabular, time‑series, and document‑based) to enable robust modeling, feature engineering, and insight generation.
• Design, implement, and validate machine learning models and analytics pipelines, including problem framing, model selection, evaluation, and iteration for real‑world performance.
• Drive advanced use of NLP and document understanding techniques to extract, transform, and enrich information from reports, PDFs, logs, and other unstructured sources.
• Build and maintain clear, impactful dashboards, reports, and visualizations (e.g., in Python, Power BI, or similar tools) to communicate findings to consultants and client stakeholders.
• Collaborate with consultants and domain experts to translate business problems into analytical solutions, articulate trade‑offs, and present recommendations to technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Ensure technical quality, reproducibility, and governance by establishing good practices for code, documentation, data management, and model tracking across projects.
• Mentor and support junior data scientists, providing guidance on methods, tooling, and best practices, and reviewing their work for quality and consistency.

What You Will Need:

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline (e.g., Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics) or related field; Master’s degree preferred or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of experience applying data science and machine learning in professional settings, including end‑to‑end delivery of analytics/ML solutions.
• Proven track record working with real‑world, messy datasets (including unstructured/document data) across the full lifecycle: data preparation, modeling, evaluation, and deployment handoff.
• Experience leading or owning significant workstreams within AI/ML or analytics projects, ideally in consulting, industrial, or asset‑intensive environments.
• Practical experience working with cloud‑based and modern data platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP, Databricks) and integrating with enterprise data sources and workflows.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Deep proficiency in Python for data science (pandas, scikit‑learn, and related libraries) and strong SQL skills for working with relational and analytical data stores.
• Strong grounding in statistics, machine learning, and model evaluation, including supervised/unsupervised methods, feature engineering, and performance diagnostics.
• Hands‑on experience with NLP and document understanding (e.g., text preprocessing, embeddings, classification, information extraction, transformers/LLMs) applied to real datasets.
• Ability to design and implement robust, maintainable analytics and ML pipelines, using notebooks and production‑ready code with Git‑based version control.
• Familiarity with modern data and ML tooling (e.g., Databricks, MLflow, Docker, CI/CD for data/ML) and good practices for experiment tracking and reproducibility.
• Proficiency with BI/visualization tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau) and data storytelling skills to communicate complex analytical results to non‑technical stakeholders.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to frame analytical approaches, explain trade‑offs, and align solutions with business objectives.
• Proven ability to work across multiple projects, manage priorities, and operate in a fast‑moving, consulting‑style environment, while mentoring junior team members.

Nice to have: exposure to industrial, maritime, or asset‑intensive domains, or prior experience in AI consulting or client‑facing roles. Must hold a valid right to work status in the UK.

This role reports to the Project Manager and does not include direct reports.