Title:  Senior Data Scientist

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Immediate Superior: Lead Data Scientist eBusiness
Location: Western Cape , Stellenbosch and/or Sandton, Gauteng
Function: Data & Technology 
Sub Function: AMEE
Type of Contract: Permanent
Reference Number: 137270
Closing Date: 03/03/2026

To lead the design, delivery, and governance of scalable, production-grade machine learning and LLM solutions that drive measurable business value. The role provides technical leadership, ensures best practice in MLOps and responsible AI, and mentors data scientists while aligning AI initiatives with business and enterprise standards.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

• Lead the planning and delivery of technical work from business requirements, coordinating across product and business teams to ensure alignment and smooth execution.  
• Lead or participate in the design, development, validation, and deployment of machine learning and LLM-based solutions.
• Define and enforce best practices for model validation, testing, monitoring, and governance, challenging existing ways of working where needed.
• Act as a technical leader and sparring partner, reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, and guiding technical decisions.
• Collaborate with data engineering and platform teams to ensure robust, scalable, and cost-effective ML and AI workloads.
• Communicate clearly with business and technical stakeholders about trade-offs, risks, and impact.
• Mentor other data scientists.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Extensive experience in data science and applied machine learning, with a track record of delivering and owning production ML systems end-to-end.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs and related technologies (including but not limited to RAG, embeddings, prompt engineering, and evaluation frameworks).
• Familiarity with responsible AI, model risk management, or regulated production environments.
• Proficient in Python, distributed data processing, and the use of Spark / Databricks.
• Proven experience deploying, scaling and maintaining production-grade ML systems in a cloud environment (preferably Azure).
• Strong understanding of MLOps best practices, including experiment tracking, model versioning, automated testing, CI/CD, and monitoring.
• Strong grounding in statistical thinking, model evaluation, and experimentation.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Master’s or PhD in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related STEM field.

The Company’s approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply. Heineken Beverages (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd) is committed to an organisational culture that recognises, appreciates and values inclusion and diversity. You must be fully eligible to live and work in South Africa to apply.