Lead Data Scientist (Ref: 195211)

Job Title: Lead Data Scientist, Search (Ref: 195211)

Location: USA – Remote

Salary: Up to $155,000

Contact: jessica.dobie@forsythbarnes.com

We’re looking for a highly skilled and passionate Lead Data Scientist, Search to help build next-generation, AI-powered search experiences at enterprise scale. This is a unique opportunity to lead the design of advanced search and recommendation systems that power highly personalized, omnichannel user journeys.

In this role, you’ll work at the intersection of AI, machine learning, data science, and search engineering, partnering with product, business, and engineering leaders to deliver world-class search capabilities using state-of-the-art technologies, including LLMs, embeddings, deep learning, and multimodal AI.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the design and implementation of advanced search algorithms, improving query understanding, retrieval, ranking, and page-level optimization using embeddings, graph learning, deep learning, and LLMs
• Design and deploy ranking algorithms that go beyond keywords to consider content quality, user intent, and experience signals
• Build AI-driven personalization systems that adapt search results based on user behavior, preferences, and contextual metadata
• Collaborate with data and search engineers to develop scalable data pipelines supporting large-scale, multimodal datasets
• Partner with software engineers and architects to design and optimize search infrastructure for performance, reliability, and scale
• Create monitoring tools and processes to track search quality, data health, and system performance in real time
• Design and analyze A/B tests and experiments to measure the impact of search improvements and validate hypotheses
• Research emerging technologies in AI, ML, and search, and translate them into production-ready solutions
• Mentor junior data scientists and ML engineers, helping grow a strong technical community focused on search excellence
• Act as a technical leader, influencing enterprise-level architecture and strategy across AI and data systems

What You’ll Bring

• 6+ years of experience in data science, machine learning, or search systems, with 2–3+ years in a technical leadership role
• Deep experience with search technologies such as Elastic, Solr, or similar platforms, including customization and tuning
• Proven ability to lead multiple projects simultaneously, owning delivery and business impact
• Strong experience with Python and modern ML/DL frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, OpenAI, LangChain, etc.)
• Expertise in big data and distributed systems (Spark, Kafka, streaming or batch processing systems)
• Experience designing and maintaining APIs and production ML systems
• Solid understanding of software engineering best practices for machine learning platforms
• Comfortable presenting technical strategy and results to senior stakeholders and executives
• Experience mentoring and developing junior technical talent
• Strong knowledge of state-of-the-art search and ranking models; experience with multimodal search is a plus
• A collaborative mindset with a strong focus on problem-solving, ownership, and delivery

Qualifications

• Master’s degree (or equivalent experience) in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or another quantitative field preferred
• 6–10 years of progressive experience in a relevant technical domain