Apex is seeking a dynamic Lead Consultant with strong consultative skills to serve as a Lead Data Scientist. The role is hands-on and intensely focused on developing advanced machine learning and deep learning models for real-world initiatives. As a Data Scientist, you will be at the forefront of research and development, focusing on the design, implementation, and fine-tuning of ML/DL models.

Role / Title: Lead Data Scientist

Location: 100% remote

Duration : Fulltime

Pay : Highly competitive & negotiable

Lead Consultant (Data Scientist with Machine Learning)

Responsibilities:

• Leading the exploration and application of Machine Learning and Deep Learning models to drive business insights and support data-driven decision making across projects.
• Demonstrate fluency in Python and ability to utilize, optimize, and alter off the shelf libraries and code.
• Implement and deploy ML models using TensorFlow, Keras, Caffe, MXNet, PyTorch and other frameworks with a focus on developing complex programs, custom algorithms, and optimized model performance.
• Develop and deploy a variety of ML models including but not limited to recommendation, anomaly detection, forecasting, personalization predictive models and other statistical methods.
• Perform experiments and comparative analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of different model architectures and fine-tune hyperparameters for optimal performance
• Design and implement fine-tuning approaches and training models.
• Lead feature engineering efforts, including data preprocessing, aggregation, and transformation for structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data to enhance model accuracy and performance.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify business problems and design end-to-end data science solutions.
• Mentor and guide junior data scientists, fostering best practices in model development, deployment, and optimization.
• Promote data science and machine learning ethics, ensuring models are developed and deployed with fairness and mitigating bias and adhering to privacy regulations and ethical standards.
• Manage and oversee projects, ensuring timely delivery and adherence to budget and quality standards.
• Demonstrate strong technical knowledge and implementation skills. Stay current on relevant technology trends and practices. Build trust and respect among internal and external stakeholders and demonstrate collaborative teamwork.
• Produce high quality deliverables, meet project deadlines, and take responsibility for engagement success. Demonstrate a passion for quality and process improvement.
• Demonstrate professional level consulting skills and communication/presentation skills.
• Continually innovate, seek creative solutions, and find new ways of adding value. Listen and seek to understand the client and meet their needs, providing consultative guidance.
• Stay attuned to the future needs of the client and work with internal resources to identify opportunities.
• Proactively provide solutions and approach adversity with a solution-focused mindset.
• Perform assessments of clients' environments and design robust solutions and roadmaps.

Requirements:

• Masters or PHD in machine learning or alternatively a comparable industry career, with significant modeling experience on delivering products.
• 8+ years of experience writing and deploying production quality models in languages such as Python.
• 8+ years of statistical predictive analytics experience, including industry-specific predictive modeling.
• 5+ years of hands-on technical experience with extensive background in deep learning networks using TensorFlow, Keras, Caffe, or similar.
• Experience in a variety of machine learning models such as recommendation, anomaly detection, forecasting, personalization predictive models and other statistical methods.
• Comprehensive knowledge and hands-on experience with fine-tuning approaches and training models.
• Demonstrated ability to work in a client-facing capacity, understanding their needs and translating them into technical solutions
• Hands-on technical experience with extensive background in deep learning networks using TensorFlow, Keras, Caffe, or similar
• Outstanding communication skills, both written and verbal, to effectively collaborate with internal teams and present solutions to clients
• Demonstrated ability to work in a client-facing capacity, understanding their needs and translating them into technical solutions
• Stay current with the latest developments in AI, machine learning, and data science, and actively contribute to the advancement of our technology stack and capabilities
• Experience with Python scripts to drive data science workflows, have experience using SQL, and managing and merging of disparate data sources statistical analysis; and data mining algorithms.
• In-depth experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP), with a particular emphasis on Large Language Models (LLMs) and Transformer architectures.
• Familiarity with MLOps processes and best practices for deployment.

• Desirables:
• Having participated in Kaggle or other DL competitions
• Relentlessly staying on top of the state of the art AI/ML papers
• Having had to deploy a model with aggressive inference speed requirements
• Experience in Amazon SageMaker, Databricks or similar tools to build, train and deploy machine learning models.