Senior Data Scientist

Senior NLP / LLM Data Scientist (Contract) – Transformers | Semantic Search | RAG Remote | UK/EU Time Zones | B2B/Outside IR35 We’re hiring a Senior Data Scientist for a long-term contract with a scaling digital platform that’s investing heavily in its AI, search, and NLP capabilities. This is a hands-on NLP/LLM role, working across production-grade text systems that power search, ranking, classification, lead-matching, and customer experience. You’ll join a small, high-impact data function where ownership is high and the work you ship directly influences product performance. You’ll Be Working On: • Building and improving modern NLP pipelines using transformer models (BERT/SBERT/DistilBERT/LLM embedders) • Designing and deploying semantic search components (dense retrieval, hybrid retrieval, vector stores) • Developing text classification and similarity models for customer behaviour and lead-quality analysis • Contributing to RAG-based AI features (retrieval augmented generation, prompt workflows, embedding pipelines) • Collaborating closely with Data Engineering and MLOps to build robust, scalable, end-to-end NLP model deployment & monitoring Tech Environment: • Python (Transformers, SentenceTransformers, PyTorch, scikit-learn) • HuggingFace ecosystem (pretrained & fine-tuned models) • Vector databases (FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate) • Cloud ML platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure) • CI/CD, MLflow, Docker, modern MLOps tooling • Experience with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Cohere, Anthropic) is highly valuable What We’re Looking For: • A Senior Data Scientist with proven, recent production experience in NLP/LLMs • Strong knowledge of transformer-based modelling, semantic search, embeddings, and text-classification pipelines • Confident designing NLP/LLM systems from scratch — retrieval, ranking, evaluation, deployment • Clear communicator who can explain architecture and reasoning in a structured way • Pragmatic, delivery-focused, and able to operate with autonomy Key Points • 6-month contract (extensions very likely) • Remote — UK or EU time zones • Start date: ASAP • Streamlined interview process This is a fantastic opportunity for a hands-on NLP/LLM specialist to build real production systems, drive meaningful product improvements, and help shape the next phase of AI-driven innovation within a fast-moving digital business. If this sounds like your kind of project, please apply!