Principal Data Scientist

About the team

In our Professional and Financial Services Business unit, we bring everything we have learned in more than a decade of Applied AI, and use it to help our clients navigate a rapidly changing landscape. We develop and embed AI solutions which help financial institutions become more efficient, enhance customer experience, and find the commercial upside in uncertain markets. Within the constraints of a highly regulated industry, we see so much opportunity for impactful innovation and are proud to set the gold-standard for marrying technical excellence with safe deployment.

About the role

As a Principal Data Scientist at Faculty, you will serve as a technical leader and domain expert who owns and drives the delivery of the most technically complex, high-impact projects and programmes for our most important clients. You also will set the technical direction for the data science team, mentor, and develop them so our data scientists remain best in class. This position focuses on deep individual contribution and technical excellence, influencing the broader data science community at Faculty.

What you'll be doing:

• Serving as a technical authority on machine learning, Generative AI, and other advanced data science methods to deliver innovative and impactful solutions.
• Leading the development of shared resources, frameworks, and best practices adopted across teams and the company.
• Contributing to the scoping and bid processes for large-scale, high-stakes projects, influencing client decisions with technical expertise.
• Owning a portfolio of work within a specific sector, applying expert knowledge to deliver exceptional value to clients.
• Leading and mentoring project teams and direct reports, ensuring the successful delivery of high-value and complex projects.
• Acting as a thought leader, publishing papers, and presenting at industry and scientific conferences to amplify a distinctive AI vision for our clients

Who we're looking for:

• You bring demonstrable technical ability, creativity and flexibility from your extensive experience (in academia , industry or both) as thought leader in this space
• You’ll have prior experience working in or for financial services clients, with standout examples where you’ve led the delivery of distinctive applications that have driven commercial impact
• You bring broad knowledge across a range of machine learning techniques, including experience building Generative AI and agentic AI applications with Large Language Models
• You have advanced coding skills in Python and proven experience building and maintaining scalable codebases.
• You enjoy mentoring junior colleagues and have prior direct management experience, inspiring them to continually stretch and grow their technical skill.
• You are highly proficient in strategic problem-solving and communicating solutions to non-technical audiences, able to select appropriate solutions and balance innovation with practical implementation.