Senior Data Scientist

Job Title: Senior Data Scientist

Location: Hartford, CT (Hybrid)
Employment Type: Contract
Experience required: 10+ years in Data Science / Machine Learning (with strong GenAI focus)

Role Overview

We are seeking a Senior/Lead Data Scientist with 10+ years of experience and deep expertise in Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Python to lead the design, development, and deployment of advanced AI solutions. This role will play a critical part in driving enterprise-scale GenAI initiatives, defining best practices, and mentoring teams while delivering high-impact, production-ready AI systems.

The ideal candidate has hands-on experience building and scaling LLM-powered applications, architecting RAG systems, and translating complex business problems into robust AI-driven solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end design, development, and deployment of Generative AI and LLM-based solutions at enterprise scale.
• Architect and implement LLM-powered use cases including summarization, classification, extraction, semantic search, and conversational AI assistants.
• Design and optimize prompt engineering strategies, RAG architectures, and fine-tuning / adapter-based approaches (LoRA, PEFT, etc.).
• Apply advanced NLP and ML techniques including text classification, topic modeling, embeddings, clustering, regression, and causal inference.
• Build scalable Python-based ML/GenAI pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and reusable components.
• Drive model evaluation, experimentation, and performance benchmarking for GenAI systems.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into AI solutions.
• Mentor junior and mid-level data scientists; provide technical leadership and code reviews.
• Contribute to AI governance, responsible AI practices, and model risk management where applicable.

Key Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, or Applied AI.
• Proven hands-on experience with Generative AI and LLMs in production environments.
• Expert-level Python programming skills, including:
• pandas, numpy, scikit-learn
• GenAI frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or direct SDK usage (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Vertex AI, Hugging Face)
• Strong experience with:
• Embeddings, vector databases, and semantic search
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns
• Prompt engineering and LLM evaluation techniques
• Solid foundation in statistics and experimentation:
• Hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, power analysis
• Experimental design and A/B testing
• Advanced understanding of object-oriented and functional programming patterns for ML workflows.
• Experience deploying models in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform) is highly desirable.
• Experience leading or architecting enterprise GenAI platforms.
• Familiarity with MLOps/LLMOps tools and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with multimodal AI (text, image, audio).
• Background in regulated industries (finance, healthcare, telecom).