Enterprise Data Science Tech Lead

**Join Us**:
At Vodafone, we’re not just shaping the future of connectivity for our customers - we’re shaping the future for everyone who joins our team. When you work with us, you’re part of a global mission to connect people, solve complex challenges, and create a sustainable and more inclusive world. If you want to grow your career whilst finding the perfect balance between work and life, Vodafone offers the opportunities to help you belong and make a real impact.

**Role Purpose**:

- Act as the technical lead responsible for implementing enterprise customers’ requirements into actionable AI/ML solutions, working in close coordination with the Enterprise AI Solution Tech Lead and Product Owners.
- Develop and deliver robust AI models and data pipelines (on-prem and cloud-hosted), ensuring they meet business objectives, customer expectations, and performance standards.
- Collaborate with the Enterprise AI team to operationalize AI use cases and translate high-level solution designs into scalable, production-ready implementations.

**Role Profile**:
**Solution Implementation**
- Translate customers’ requirements into actionable data science tasks and implementation plans.
- Lead the development, training, and deployment of AI models and data pipelines tailored to customer-specific requirements.
- Ensure models and AI components are scalable, efficient, and production-ready, with smooth integration into customer systems and enterprise platforms.

**Technical Leadership**

Provide hands-on technical guidance to data scientists, engineers, and MLOps
- teams, ensuring accurate and effective implementation.
- Lead technical squads through virtual collaboration, guaranteeing solutions are built to meet both customer expectations and technical standards.

**Decision Execution**
- Validate model performance, data quality, and technical fit before solution handover.
- Collaborate with the Enterprise Tech Leads and Product Owners to review and confirm solution readiness based on business impact, feasibility, and model validation results.
- Provide input on task prioritization based on complexity, risk, and technical dependencies.

**Customer Support**
- Work alongside the Enterprise team to ensure implemented AI solutions meet business outcomes and address real customer needs.
- Explain data science approaches, results, and business insights in a clear and accessible manner to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Contribute to building customer confidence in Vodafone’s AI capabilities by ensuring reliable and transparent solution delivery.

**Value Realization**
- Identify technical opportunities to improve performance, accuracy, and efficiency of existing AI solutions.
- Recommend data science enhancements and automation strategies that can further strengthen the customer’s business outcomes.
- Contribute to refining reusable assets, components, and best practices for enterprise AI delivery

**Core Competencies and Technical requirements**:
**Customer-Focused Execution**
- Strong communication skills to understand solution requirements in collaboration with Enterprise Tech leads and Product Owners and translate them into data science tasks.
- Ability to present data-driven insights, model performance, and implementation results in a clear, business-relevant manner.

**Problem Solving and Innovation**
- Strong analytical thinking and debugging skills to address real-world AI deployment challenges (e.g., model drift, data quality, latency).

Creativity in designing tailored AI pipelines that are both effective and maintainable in production

**Collaboration and Delivery Leadership**
- Proven ability to collaborate with engineers, data scientists, MLOps specialists, and architects to deliver high-quality AI solutions.
- Leadership in execution: mentoring technical team members, performing code reviews, and ensuring delivery excellence
- ** Must-Have Technical / Professional Qualifications**
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.
- 5-7 years of hands-on experience in developing and deploying AI/ML models in production environments.
- Advanced proficiency in ML libraries and frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn).
- Experience with big data processing and distributed computing using Apache Spark or similar technologies.

Experience with MLOps tools and techniques for versioning, CI/CD, monitoring, and scaling models

**Not a perfect fit?**:
**Who we are**:
We are a leading international Telco, serving millions of customers. At Vodafone, we believe that connectivity is a force for good. If we use it for the things that really matter, it can improve people's lives and the world around us. Through our technology we empower people, connecting everyone regardless of who they are or where they live and we protect the planet, whilst helping our customers do the same.

Belonging at Vodafone isn't a concept; it's lived, breathed,