Senior Data Scientist with a GenAI focus

Welcome to an exciting opportunity where ambitious individuals are invited to join a team of inquisitive minds and supportive peers, all driven by a shared passion and diverse skills aimed at creating value for businesses through data. 
 

About Us   

We are Ascent! and we help our customers solve problems, elevate, and do existing things better. We are on a mission to help our customers connect data, software, and purpose to create extraordinary outcomes. You could say we are a digital transformation business. 

We specialize in software product development, analytics, data science, IoT solutions, machine learning, DevOps optimization, and modernization of applications, data, and platforms. 

We work with incredible clients in all types of industries such as smart home devices, space exploration, beer manufacturing, finance, ecology, and logistics. We work with some of the sharpest minds in the brightest businesses and we employ the sharpest minds too! 

At Ascent, we also believe in fostering a vibrant office community where collaboration thrives and connections flourish. With our hybrid approach, we prioritize hiring individuals who reside in close proximity to our central offices in Bristol and London. Our aim is to cultivate a positive atmosphere and sense of belonging by facilitating easy access to the office. However, we welcome applicants from all other areas in the UK, as we value diversity and recognize the unique perspectives each individual brings to our team. Join us in shaping a workplace where proximity enhances collaboration while inclusivity strengthens our community.  

About the role 

You will join our rapidly expanding data practice and will be part of our multi-disciplined teams, building Generative AI-based solutions for clients. You’ll work very closely with our customers to iterate, experiment, and prototype solutions for their business challenges. This role will require a strong consultative approach coupled with critical thinking and hands-on NLP and GenAI (RAG) expertise. You’ll be a key member in this team, with significant customer exposure, taking them on the journey from early adoption through to scale. You’ll have a solid understanding of the foundations required for successful projects across infrastructure, business, data and AI, and be an anchor of the relationship with our customers. Speaking with empathy and credibility will be key.

Skills and Experience required

• 1+ years of focused LLM / GenAI and RAG project experience, preferably in a leadership role;
• A data science background. NLP experience is key;
• Fluent in Python, and able to rapidly and independently prototype and develop code, as well as deliver production-quality;
• Experience in some of the Azure data services;
• Familiar with best practices on model tuning, drift monitoring and optimisation;
• Experienced in consulting and stakeholder management, break down business problems and formulate technical solutions.

What you will do

• Understand client requests and business processes to propose how GenAI may solve business challenges;
• Extensive prompt engineering;
• Chain of thought reasoning to build up LLM based solutions;
• Resource Augmented Generation (RAG) including optimisation of chunking and metadata;
• Follow Responsible AI principles;
• Rapidly develop customer demonstrations to show the art of the possible with GenAI;
• Contribute to Ascent's Gen AI methodology and accelerators;
• Be a member of our Data Science and Gen AI communities and play a key role in continuing to evolve Ascent’s GenAI capability and collateral.

Working at Ascent

At Ascent we promote a healthy work-life balance by offering flexibility in where you work.  We also promote well-being and provide access to Well Being Coaches.  

Your development and learning will be taken seriously, and we'll support your professional development with training and certification, with regular feedback and review. It is a fun, supportive and modern workplace where we really live by our company values of Empathy, Energy and Audacity! Ascent also offers a variety of benefits in each of our countries. 

Ascent is an equal opportunities employer. We take intentional steps to ensure inclusion and belonging are something real here, not just something we talk about. No person will be treated less favourably because of their gender, pregnancy, and maternity status, marital or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ethnic origin, age, religion or belief, or disability status. If you require any reasonable accommodation, please let us know when you apply.