Principal Data Scientist in London

Are you passionate about turning AI potential into real-world business impact?

We're looking for a Principal Data Scientist to help shape and grow an AI practice, working with customers to identify opportunities, prove value and deliver practical, production-ready Data Science and AI solutions.

This is a hands-on, customer-facing role for someone who combines deep technical expertise with commercial awareness, excellent communication skills and the curiosity to explore how AI can solve meaningful business problems.

What will you be doing?

• Shape AI strategy and solutions - Work with customers to understand their challenges, assess opportunities and identify the right technical approach.
• Build and prove value - Develop Proofs of Value using real-world data, benchmarking solutions and demonstrating measurable business outcomes.
• Work across modern AI technologies - Apply machine learning, predictive modelling, forecasting, NLP, Generative AI, LLMs, RAG and agentic AI where they deliver genuine value.
• Develop and adapt AI models - Evaluate and apply prompting, RAG, fine-tuning and other model adaptation techniques to improve performance, selecting the approach that best meets eachcustomer’s needs.
• Lead technical AI architecture - Design practical solutions spanning models, data, integrations, APIs, security, deployment and hosting.
• Bridge experimentation and production - Help move successful solutions towards production, working collaboratively with software, data, cloud, security and infrastructure specialists.
• Champion responsible AI - Embed robust evaluation, monitoring, governance, explainability and appropriate controls into AI solutions.
• Help grow the AI practice - Contribute to pre-sales, customer discovery, technical proposals, thought leadership and reusable assets. Mentor colleagues and help turn new opportunities into successful, lasting customer relationships.

What we're looking for

You'll bring a strong combination of technical depth, commercial thinking and client-facing capability, including:

• Significant hands-on experience delivering Data Science, machine learning or AI solutions using real-world data.
• Strong Python and SQL skills, alongside experience with relevant frameworks and tools such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face or equivalent.
• Practical experience with modern AI techniques, including LLMs, Generative AI, embeddings, RAG and model evaluation, ideally with hands-on experience of fine-tuning or adapting pre-trained models.
• A solid grounding in statistics, experimentation, model evaluation and the ability to choose the right approach for the problem.
• Experience designing AI solutions and understanding the trade-offs between commercial APIs, cloud services and privately hosted models.
• An appreciation of production requirements, including model serving, APIs, monitoring, security and lifecycle management.
• Confidence working directly with customers, translating complex technical concepts into clear business recommendations and measurable outcomes.
• A collaborative, pragmatic mindset, with the ability to take technical ownership, mentor others and work effectively with specialist teams.

Why this opportunity?

This is an opportunity to do more than build models. You'll help shape the direction of an AI practice, influence customer strategy, explore emerging technologies and contribute directly to business growth.

You'll have the autonomy to make sound technical decisions, the opportunity to work across a diverse range of business challenges and the chance to help build a practice that delivers AI with purpose.

Interested?

If you're a technically strong Data Scientist who enjoys solving complex problems, engaging with customers and helping a business grow, we'd love to hear from you.

Get in touch to find out more or apply.

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