Job Description

Ciklum is looking for an Expert Data Scientist to join our team full-time in India.

We are a custom product engineering company that supports both multinational organizations and scaling startups to solve their most complex business challenges. With a global team of over 4,000 highly skilled developers, consultants, analysts and product owners, we engineer technology that redefines industries and shapes the way people live.

About The Role

As an Expert Data Scientist, become a part of a cross-functional development team engineering experiences of tomorrow. The Expert/Principal Data Scientist is a senior technical leader responsible for setting the standard for evaluation-driven development across the organization's AI/ML and analytics portfolio. This person defines modeling strategy, evaluation frameworks, and delivery governance across multiple 45-day release cycles, and is accountable for demonstrating measurable business impact at a portfolio level while mentoring senior and mid-level data scientists.

Responsibilities

Evaluation-Driven Development — Strategy & Standards

Define and champion the organization's evaluation-driven development framework: standards for selecting modeling approaches (statistical, ML, optimization, simulation, GenAI), evaluation metric design, and validation methodology
Establish enterprise guidelines for aligning evaluation metrics to business and process outcomes, ensuring consistency across teams and products
Set standards for the use of synthetic data, historical data, and real-world/controlled validation across the model lifecycle, including approval gates before production rollout
Own the definition of measurable improvement for the portfolio — ensuring every release is backed by a rigorous before/after comparison against business KPIs

Delivery Leadership

Oversee and be accountable for multiple concurrent workstreams delivered through 45-day versioned agile cycles, ensuring the portfolio consistently ships incremental, measurable value
Act as the escalation point for delivery risk, technical trade-offs, and cross-team dependencies across release cycles
Partner with product and engineering leadership to prioritize the roadmap based on expected business impact vs. delivery cost/risk

Platform, MLOps & Cost

Set architectural and MLOps direction for AI/ML platforms and analytics products on AWS, including model deployment patterns, monitoring, and automated governance
Own cost-management and performance-optimization strategy for data and ML workloads at scale, setting budgets and efficiency targets across teams
Define enterprise approach to synthetic data generation, offline experimentation, and controlled real-world validation, including tooling selection

Governance & Compliance

Own the framework for balancing model performance, explainability, regulatory compliance, and cost across the portfolio, including escalation criteria for high-risk models
Represent the data science function in audits, regulatory reviews, and executive reporting on model governance and business impact

Leadership

Mentor Senior Data Scientists and review their evaluation frameworks, modeling choices, and delivery outcomes
Drive adoption of best practices in evaluation-driven development across the organization

Requirements

Master's or PhD in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Operations Research, or related field (or equivalent demonstrated experience)
10+ years of experience delivering data science/ML/analytics solutions, including leadership of technical strategy at a portfolio or platform level
Proven track record of selecting and justifying modeling approaches across statistical, ML, optimization, simulation, and GenAI paradigms based on business context
Deep experience defining evaluation metrics tied to business and process KPIs, and demonstrating measurable outcomes from delivered models
Extensive hands-on and architectural experience with AWS AI/ML platforms and MLOps practices at scale
Demonstrated ownership of agile, versioned delivery cycles across multiple teams or products
Strong track record balancing model performance, explainability, compliance, and cost trade-offs, including in regulated environments
Experience designing synthetic data strategies, offline experimentation frameworks, and controlled real-world validation programs
Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills

Desirable

Experience presenting model governance and impact metrics to executive or regulatory audiences
Publications, patents, or public speaking in applied ML/AI evaluation methodology
Experience building or scaling MLOps platforms from the ground up

What's in it for you

Strong community: Work alongside top professionals in a friendly, open-door environment
Growth focus: Take on large-scale projects with a global impact and expand your expertise
Tailored learning: Boost your skills with internal events (meetups, conferences, workshops), Udemy access, language courses, and company-paid certifications
Endless opportunities: Explore diverse domains through internal mobility, finding the best fit to gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge technologies
Care: We've got you covered with company-paid medical insurance, mental health support, and financial & legal consultations

About Us

At Ciklum, we are always exploring innovations, empowering each other to achieve more, and engineering solutions that matter. With us, you'll work with cutting-edge technologies, contribute to impactful projects, and be part of a One Team culture that values collaboration and progress.

India is a strategic innovation hub for Ciklum, with growing teams in Chennai and Pune leading advancements in EdgeTech, AR/VR, IoT, and beyond. Join us to collaborate on game-changing solutions and take your career to the next level.

Explore, empower, engineer with Ciklum!

Interested already We would love to get to know you! Submit your application. We can't wait to see you at Ciklum.