Lead Data Scientist

Job Description Lead Data ScientistLocation: Midlands based HQ with weekly on-site presenceSalary: Up to 75,000 plus competitive bonus and benefitsA large UK consumer eCommerce business is scaling a new internal advertising and monetisation platform and is hiring a Lead Data Scientist to take technical ownership of its core algorithms. This is a technical leadership role with end-to-end ownership of the algorithm roadmap. You will set direction, make architectural decisions, and lead delivery from experimentation through to production in a high-scale environment.What you will doOwn the technical and algorithm roadmap for a large-scale internal ads platform.Design, test and deploy advanced predictive and ranking models such as Two-Tower architectures, RNNs and learning-to-rank approaches.Lead architecture, model selection and production design decisions.Improve feedback loops to increase responsiveness to real-world events and outcomes.Set best practices for production ML, testing, monitoring and deployment.Act as the technical authority for data science across the ads domain.Work closely with engineering, product and commercial teams.Present outcomes and recommendations to senior stakeholders in clear business terms.What you bringStrong background in data science applied to personalisation, recommendations or ranking problems.Proven experience owning and delivering production machine learning systems.Advanced hands-on experience with PyTorch or TensorFlow.Strong Python and SQL skills with experience in distributed processing such as PySpark.Comfortable making technical trade-offs in complex, ambiguous environments.Able to translate complex technical work into commercial impact.Nice to haveExperience in AdTech or monetisation systems.Familiarity with MLflow, Databricks and modern DevOps tooling.Experience working in large-scale consumer or eCommerce environments.Working style and benefitsWeekly on-site presence with flexible working.Competitive base salary with annual performance bonusSharesave scheme.Private medical insurance.Pension contribution.25 days holiday plus bank holidays with buy and sell options.Staff discounts.Subsidised food and on-site facilities.Gym discounts.Digital GP service and wellbeing support.Why joinYou will be joining a business operating at national and international scale, investing heavily in applied machine learning that directly impacts revenue. This is not a research role. Your work will be put into production, used at scale, and you will be accountable for its impact.

Created: 2026-02-08