Key Purpose

• Lead the technical development, testing, and implementation of advanced Large Language Model (LLM) based projects and related technologies to deliver end-to-end data science and AI products within the organization.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams and business partners to design, build, and deploy scalable solutions that will directly impact staff and customers.
• Create opportunities that delight our customers by leveraging Discovery’s vast clinical, demographic and operational data. Using this data with predictive modelling and machine learning techniques you will have a direct impact on strategic initiatives to support Discovery’s world-class operations.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of LLM – and generative AI-based solutions that address large-scale and complex problems and materially drive the company’s global product offerings and strategy forward.
• Collaborate with product owners, project managers, and executive stakeholders to identify and prioritize business problems that can be solved with LLMs.
• Conduct desktop research into the state-of-the-art in LLMs and Generative AI and apply findings to real-world applications (either requested by business or suggested by yourself).
• Conduct research and development of speech-to-text and audio-based language models, integrating with LLM pipelines where applicable.
• Conduct experimental research on the use of LLMs in real-world company applications to ensure that design and development decisions are made scientifically and optimize for and balance all business requirements. These include accuracy, scalability, efficiency, reliability, safety, and cost-effectiveness.
• Translate strategic direction into technical product definitions and roadmaps.
• Participate actively in internal and external communities discussing and designing policies for the ethical use of AI and ensure your team’s work meets ethical AI standards.
• Contribute substantially to a culture of innovation, leading the prototyping and development of novel methodologies and approaches. Provide strong thought leadership in this regard.
• Communicate complex technical concepts to executives and non-technical stakeholders effectively.
• Demonstrate strong emotional intelligence by understanding and uplifting team members and skillfully managing challenging situations with composure.
• Advise other teams in the business on best practice based on your experience.
• Mining large structured and unstructured datasets to find new insights to inform operational efficiency and ‘member- delight’ interaction strategies
• Research and application of the most up to date machine learning algorithms and AI techniques
• Present data and model findings in a way that provides actionable insights to business users
• Monitoring model performance

Personal Attributes and Skills

• Expert in data science programming languages such as R, Python, Scala
• Expert in data manipulation skills including SQL to extract, transform and load data
• Experience in interactive data exploration and data-driven story telling
• Understanding and application of Big Data and distributed computing principles
• Hands on experience with Big Data systems will be preferred
• Strong analytical and statistical knowledge with an understanding of the latest machine learning algorithms for both structured and unstructured data
• Ability to adapt to emerging technologies and tools
• Proficiency in version control systems such as Git for collaborative coding and maintaining code integrity
• Ability to formulate problem statements and develop a plan for tackling the problem
• Strong ability to communicate findings and recommendations from data (visual, verbal and written)
• Integration and implementation experience
• A passion for data exploration and analytics
• Self-starter
• Willingness to learn and grow exponentially
• A restless curiosity towards data and uncovering unknown correlations
• Ability to work cohesively in a team environment and balance multiple priorities
• A team player who can work alone when required and without supervision
• High level of attention to detail, resilience, enthusiasm, energy and drive

Education and Experience

• Honours or Master’s degree in Computer Science with solid experience in statistical modelling, data mining and machine learning, OR
• Honours or Master’s degree in either Data Science, Statistics, or Applied Mathematics with some experience in software engineering, computer science or working with big disparate sets of data
• Other analytical qualifications will also be considered if accompanied by the relevant experience
• A minimum of 3 – 5 years’ work experience in a data science position

Technical skills additional (advantageous)

• Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP, Azure, or AWS
• Experience with tools such as Whisper, DeepSpeech, OpenAI or HuggingFace
• Experience in sourcing and combining data from both structured and unstructured sources
• Experience with Google Tensor flow
• Familiarity with MLops practices and tools
• Proven tack record of Data Science or AI project delivery
• Deep understanding of LLMs and experience with models like GPTs, LLaMa, Gemini etc