Lead Data Scientist - Next Generation Optical Sensing Solutions

Our client is a highly ambitious UK deep-tech venture in rapid expansion mode. The company's innovative technology offers both a leap in performance and superior power efficiency to create future optical spectroscopy solutions across a number of industry sectors.

• Proven expertise in spectroscopy, optical sensing, or closely related domains (e.g., NIR/SWIR, chemometrics, or hyperspectral imaging), ideally applied in commercial or applied R&D environments.
• Strong programming capability in Python and/or MATLAB, with hands-on experience building, validating, and deploying machine learning models using libraries such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Practical experience applying statistical and machine learning techniques such as PCA, PLS, clustering, anomaly detection, and supervised classification to real datasets.
• Evidence of building end-to-end data pipelines, including data acquisition, preprocessing, feature engineering, model development, and performance evaluation.
• Track record of customer-facing or stakeholder-facing technical work, including translating complex technical concepts into clear, actionable insights for non-expert audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to validate models rigorously, including handling trade-offs (e.g., false positives vs false negatives), assessing dataset sufficiency, and managing bias and generalisation risks.
• Experience contributing to an early-stage or start-up environment showing adaptability, ownership, and the ability to operate effectively in dynamic environment.