Senior Data Scientist – AI-Native (DRWN)
Job title – Senior Data Scientist (AI-Native)
Client Location – New York, NY, USA
Remote work offering – Hybrid (NYC-based)
Client Industry – Media & Publishing
Contract Length – 12 months
Contract type – Freelance
Project focus
Our client, a major media and publishing company, is embedding AI orchestration across the business and is looking for a senior Data Scientist who can combine strong traditional data science with a genuinely AI-native mindset. You’ll work closely with product, engineering, editorial, and revenue teams to apply machine learning and agentic AI workflows to real business problems, from content recommendation and audience segmentation to customer behaviour modelling.
Key skills and Experience required
- 7+ years of experience in Data Science
- Strong Python and SQL skills
- Proven experience building and deploying machine learning models into production
- Experience across user segmentation, content recommendation, churn prediction, LTV modelling, NLP, regression, classification, clustering, and statistical modelling
- Hands-on experience with Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, or PyTorch
- Big data experience with Spark or BigQuery
- Cloud experience with GCP or AWS
- Genuine hands-on experience with AI-assisted development and agentic workflows (e.g. Claude Code, Codex) – beyond casual use of tools like ChatGPT
- A track record of prototyping and applying AI agents or workflows to real business use cases
- Strong stakeholder communication skills, with experience working cross-functionally across product, engineering, editorial, and revenue teams
- Leadership experience
If this role is of interest, please apply with an updated CV.
Darwin Recruitment is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.
Lungelo Nkosi