At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead a team to design and deploy cutting-edge ML/AI solutions that drive business impact.
- Company: Join a forward-thinking tech company focused on innovation and collaboration.
- Benefits: Attractive salary, flexible working options, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Work with large datasets and modern technologies in a supportive, high-performance culture.
- Why this job: Shape the future of AI while mentoring a talented team in a dynamic environment.
- Qualifications: Proven experience in data science and strong leadership skills required.
The predicted salary is between 80000 - 98000 £ per year.
Role Overview IC tech leadership: design, build, test, evaluate, deploy, and monitor machine learning and AI solutions in production, ensuring they are robust, scalable, and aligned to business needs.
Includes retrieval, ranking, recommender systems and LLM-based components powering conversational experiences.
Responsibilities Develop the team: mentoring and coaching 5 data scientists, creating a high-performing team culture with strong technical standards.
Collaborate with cross-functional partners (Product, Engineering, Design, Delivery) and online business stakeholders to identify opportunities and deliver impactful customer experiences.
Build reusable capabilities: identify opportunities to abstract common logic, modules, and functionality across multiple use cases, and convert them into reusable core components, frameworks, and assets.
Provide technical direction and standards: champion best practices in exploratory analysis, experimentation, model development, evaluation, coding standards, testing, documentation, monitoring, and productionisation.
Lead a team owning ML/AI problems end-to-end, including LLM-based solutions — from framing and modelling through to production deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement — delivering measurable business impact.
Define and instil in the team strong software engineering principles to build robust, scalable ML systems, taking responsibility for performance and reliability in production rather than handing off.
Apply strong systems and architectural experience — identifying repeatable patterns across use cases and abstracting them into reusable components or shared capabilities that improve the scalability and effectiveness of core algorithms.
Work with large-scale datasets and distributed data processing (e. g.
Spark), and with modern recommendation or personalisation systems at scale (e. g. large-scale retrieval and ranking architectures, real-time inference, vector representations, approximate nearest neighbour search).
Communicate complex technical concepts, recommendations, and trade-offs clearly and effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders.
Qualifications
Lead Data Scientist employer: Marks and Spencer plc (UK)
Marks and Spencer plc is an exceptional employer, offering a vibrant work culture that thrives on teamwork and collaboration. Located in Kingston upon Thames, employees benefit from a dynamic retail environment where they can grow their skills in fashion and customer service while enjoying opportunities for personal development and career advancement. With a commitment to providing a remarkable shopping experience, Marks and Spencer fosters a supportive atmosphere that values passion and adaptability.
Contact Details:
Marks and Spencer plc (UK) Recruitment Team
