Senior ML Engineer / Data Scientist
Portugal/ Remote / Freelance or Permanent
We are looking for a Senior ML Engineer / Data Scientist who thrives at the intersection of strategy and execution, someone who can rapidly move from identifying priorities and shaping ideas to delivering production-ready solutions. You will play a pivotal role in advancing our Advanced Analytics capabilities, acting as both a technical leader and a trusted partner to business stakeholders across the organisation.
This is a high-impact position for someone who takes genuine ownership, leads by example, and is passionate about embedding data science best practices at scale.
**What You'll Do**
- Champion best practices, standards, and methodologies across your Advanced Analytics capability area, ensuring consistently high-quality data science output
- Articulate the value of your domain (e.G., AI/ML) to the broader organisation, shaping decision-making and becoming a go-to advisor for key business stakeholders
- Stay ahead of the curve — continuously bringing in the latest advancements, tools, and techniques to enhance team capability
- Evaluate and recommend new technologies and ML techniques that improve efficiency and accelerate delivery
- Foster a culture of continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and professional growth within the team
*Delivery & Collaboration*
- Partner with stakeholders across the organisation to understand business objectives and co-design data-driven solutions
- Work closely with Analytics Product Owners and the Cloud/Engineering team to deliver Data Science and ML workstreams on time, within budget, and to quality standards
- Lead and facilitate ideation and scoping sessions with business stakeholders to define the data needed to address specific challenges
- Collaborate with external vendors, assessing their capabilities and ensuring alignment with internal standards and project requirements
- Mentor, coach, and oversee colleagues in the development, deployment, and integration of Advanced Analytics solutions
- Remain actively hands-on — conducting data analysis, prototyping frameworks, and producing high-quality, scalable, production-ready code
- Own the end-to-end documentation, demos, and presentations required to communicate and validate your solutions
**Technical Requirements**
- Azure AI Services — AI Foundry, OpenAI, AI Search, Document Intelligence
- Container Apps, Container App Environments, and Container Registries
- Application Gateway, Key Vault, Managed Identities
- Storage Accounts and Virtual Networks
- Python — production-grade code, with strong experience in LangChain, Pydantic, and FastAPI
- ETL development, including parallel computing approaches
- Generative AI — Prompt Engineering, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and GenAI application architecture
- Terraform (Infrastructure as Code)
- Docker
- Code versioning via Azure Repos
- CI/CD pipeline development using Azure Pipelines
- Linting, unit testing, and adherence to software development best practices
Nice to Have
- React development experience, including TypeScript, REST/GraphQL, state management, UI/UX principles, HTML/CSS, and caching strategies