Data Scientist - consultant

Our client is seeking a Data Scientist to design and implement data science and applied machine learning solutions supporting new product development, intelligent search and discovery, content enrichment, and metadata generation. Working as part of a cross-functional team, you will evaluate commercial and open-source AI models, perform data analysis, and deliver production-ready solutions with measurable business impact.

This role partners closely with engineering, product, and business stakeholders to develop end-to-end AI and machine learning solutions, improve data quality, and enhance search, retrieval, and content intelligence capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate, fine-tune, and maintain statistical and machine learning models deployed in production environments, measuring and communicating performance improvements.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design and optimize AI/ML solutions that support new product capabilities and improve internal workflows.
• Research, evaluate, and recommend machine learning models and methodologies, presenting findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Analyze model quality and performance, identifying opportunities for improvement and translating findings into actionable recommendations.
• Design and enhance data and machine learning pipelines, including multimodal embedding generation and knowledge extraction, with a focus on scalability, efficiency, and accuracy.
• Develop user-focused search algorithms and retrieval solutions that maximize relevance and performance.
• Stay current with advancements in NLP, machine learning, and generative AI, recommending new technologies and approaches where appropriate.
• Support the complete machine learning lifecycle, including problem definition, experimentation, deployment, monitoring, and ongoing optimization.
• Communicate analytical findings and technical concepts effectively to a wide range of audiences.

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional experience in Data Science or Applied Machine Learning.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, or a related technical field.
• Strong Python programming skills, including experience with NumPy, Pandas, and large-scale semi-structured (JSON) datasets.
• Hands-on experience with core machine learning techniques including classification, clustering, regression, and ranking.
• Experience applying NLP techniques such as:
  • Named Entity Recognition (NER)
  • Entity disambiguation
  • Semantic similarity
  • Embedding-based retrieval
• Experience working with transformer-based models for extraction, classification, summarization, and text generation.
• Experience building or improving hybrid search solutions, retrieval pipelines, query expansion, intent detection, and relevance tuning using Elasticsearch or OpenSearch.
• Experience working with both language models and multimodal AI models.
• Experience processing large-scale text and image datasets.
• Familiarity with ML Engineering and MLOps practices, including deploying and maintaining production machine learning solutions.
• Knowledge of experimentation methodologies including A/B testing, cohort analysis, session segmentation, and model evaluation metrics.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent projects in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience working across the full machine learning development lifecycle.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, or a related discipline.
• Experience with graph databases, knowledge graphs, or entity relationship modeling.
• Experience designing scalable AI solutions for search, recommendation, or content intelligence platforms.
• Experience working with large, evolving datasets in production environments.
• Curiosity and interest in emerging AI technologies and practical applications of generative AI.

Additional Information

• Hybrid work arrangement (multiple days onsite each week).
• Must have Opensearch or Elasticsearch
• Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future sponsorship.
• $60/hr. W2 or $75/hr. IC (no C2C)