452 Lead Data Scientist jobs in the United Kingdom

Lead Data Scientist

Hybrid - London 1 day per week

Up to £85,000

About the Role

We are working with a high-growth performance marketing and technology company who are looking for a new Lead Data Scientist to join the team.

You'll be working at the intersection of data, technology, and marketing, you’ll lead the delivery of cutting-edge machine learning, optimisation, and analytics solutions that drive measurable business outcomes.

Reporting directly to the Director of Data, you’ll take ownership of projects across areas such as customer lifetime value, Propensity, and experimentation, whilst also acting as a data lead for major clients.

Initially hands-on, this role will evolve into a more strategic leadership position, with team management responsibilities (starting with three Data Scientists, growing to five within a year) expected within the first six months.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and deliver data science solutions across predictive modelling, optimisation, and experimentation.
• Act as a strategic data partner to key clients, owning technical delivery and ensuring high-quality results.
• Design and deploy machine learning models and optimisation algorithms in production environments.
• Collaborate with engineering, marketing, and analytics teams to integrate data science into campaign strategy and tooling.
• Mentor and guide junior data scientists, establishing best practices and scalable workflows.
• Help grow and shape the data science team and its role within the wider business.

What We’re Looking For

• Strong technical foundation with proficiency in Python, SQL, and cloud platforms.
• Proven experience in deploying machine learning models or optimisation algorithms into production.
• Solid understanding of digital marketing concepts, platforms (e.g., Google Ads, Meta), and analytics tools.
• Demonstrated experience across key use cases such as:
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) modelling
• Propensity scoring and lead prioritisation
• Budget allocation and bidding optimisation
• Experimentation, A/B testing, causal inference, MMM
• Advanced analytics (e.g. marginal returns curves, supply-demand modelling)
• Strong communication skills with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts for stakeholders.
• Leadership potential with a willingness to coach and develop others.

Please note, that this role cannot offer sponsorship.

Lead Data Scientist – ML Focused

Remote – UK

Up to £90,000 + Benefits

About the Role

We’re hiring a Lead Data Scientist to join a fast-growing, specialist data consultancy delivering high-impact solutions across sectors such as energy, public sector, manufacturing, and health. You’ll play a key role in solving complex challenges using cutting-edge ML or GenAI approaches, working end-to-end across projects in a client-facing capacity. This is a leadership position, ideal for someone who thrives in a consultancy environment and wants to deliver real-world impact.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and deliver data science solutions end-to-end, from discovery through deployment.
• Lead project teams, mentor junior colleagues, and manage delivery standards across multiple workstreams.
• Communicate complex findings clearly to senior stakeholders and clients.
• Support business development through proposal writing and pre-sales work.

We're looking for someone with:

• Proven experience delivering data science projects in a consultancy setting.
• Strong Python skills with experience in ML or GenAI (e.g. LLMs, prompt engineering, optimisation).
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management abilities.
• A track record of managing teams and shaping development roadmaps.
• experience with cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP), and familiarity with MLOps lifecycle or solution architecture.

Lead Decision/Data Scientist – Credit

London, UK – Hybrid

Up to £100,000 + Benefits

About the Company

We are working with a fast-growing fintech scaleup, who are on a mission to reshape access to financial services across underserved markets. With a strong focus on innovation, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making, the company is building impactful financial products tailored to real customer needs.

We’re looking for a Lead Decision Scientist, to lead the development, deployment, and ongoing optimisation of credit risk models. This is a high-impact position at the intersection of data science, risk, and business strategy. You’ll drive lending strategy, own the end-to-end modeling lifecycle, and guide a growing team of analysts as we scale.

This role is perfect for someone who thrives on experimentation, has a deep understanding of credit data, and enjoys working in a fast-paced environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and maintenance of credit risk and affordability models using bureau, open banking, and behavioural data
• Own the full model lifecycle from data sourcing and feature engineering to validation, deployment, and monitoring
• Design and run A/B and champion/challenger tests to improve performance across approval rates, losses, and customer experience
• Analyse credit performance data to deliver insights that guide strategic decisions
• Mentor and support junior analysts/data scientists as the team expands
• Collaborate with data engineering to deploy models into production
• Work closely with stakeholders to define goals, communicate findings, and translate model outputs into business value

About You

You are an analytical thinker with a passion for using data to drive credit decisioning. You bring hands-on experience building machine learning models for consumer credit and understand the nuances of data preparation, feature selection, and model validation in high-stakes environments.

• 5–7 years of experience in a credit-related data science or decision science role
• Proficiency in Python and experience with libraries such as scikit-learn, XGBoost, or LightGBM
• Strong SQL skills for data extraction and transformation
• Experience working with transactional (e.g., Open Banking) and bureau data (e.g., Experian, Equifax)
• Expertise in feature engineering, handling class imbalance, and evaluating model performance using AUC, KS, precision/recall, etc.
• Understanding of model monitoring and techniques for identifying drift
• Experience with unsupervised learning (e.g., K-means, PCA, autoencoders) for fraud detection or segmentation
• Exposure to start-up or scale-up environments
• Familiarity with alternative data for credit scoring (e.g., device data, psychometrics)

If this role looks of interest, please apply here.

Please note - This role cannot offer sponsorship.

Lead Decision/Data Scientist – Credit

London, UK – Hybrid

Up to £100,000 + Benefits

About the Company

We are working with a fast-growing fintech scaleup, who are on a mission to reshape access to financial services across underserved markets. With a strong focus on innovation, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making, the company is building impactful financial products tailored to real customer needs.

We’re looking for a Lead Decision Scientist, to lead the development, deployment, and ongoing optimisation of credit risk models. This is a high-impact position at the intersection of data science, risk, and business strategy. You’ll drive lending strategy, own the end-to-end modeling lifecycle, and guide a growing team of analysts as we scale.

This role is perfect for someone who thrives on experimentation, has a deep understanding of credit data, and enjoys working in a fast-paced environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and maintenance of credit risk and affordability models using bureau, open banking, and behavioural data
• Own the full model lifecycle from data sourcing and feature engineering to validation, deployment, and monitoring
• Design and run A/B and champion/challenger tests to improve performance across approval rates, losses, and customer experience
• Analyse credit performance data to deliver insights that guide strategic decisions
• Mentor and support junior analysts/data scientists as the team expands
• Collaborate with data engineering to deploy models into production
• Work closely with stakeholders to define goals, communicate findings, and translate model outputs into business value

About You

You are an analytical thinker with a passion for using data to drive credit decisioning. You bring hands-on experience building machine learning models for consumer credit and understand the nuances of data preparation, feature selection, and model validation in high-stakes environments.

• 5–7 years of experience in a credit-related data science or decision science role
• Proficiency in Python and experience with libraries such as scikit-learn, XGBoost, or LightGBM
• Strong SQL skills for data extraction and transformation
• Experience working with transactional (e.g., Open Banking) and bureau data (e.g., Experian, Equifax)
• Expertise in feature engineering, handling class imbalance, and evaluating model performance using AUC, KS, precision/recall, etc.
• Understanding of model monitoring and techniques for identifying drift
• Experience with unsupervised learning (e.g., K-means, PCA, autoencoders) for fraud detection or segmentation
• Exposure to start-up or scale-up environments
• Familiarity with alternative data for credit scoring (e.g., device data, psychometrics)

If this role looks of interest, please apply here.

Please note - This role cannot offer sponsorship.

LEAD DATA SCIENTIST - Insurance

HYBRID - London

£80,000 - £100,000

We are working with a household name in the UK insurance space on the search for a Lead Data Scientist. They are looking for someone to help spearhead their Machine Learning Initiatives.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to be either a technical lead, or more of a people manager.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead the end-to-end design, development, and implementation of ML/AI models
• Develop and deploy Large Language Models (LLMs) and/or internal chatbot systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify opportunities for leveraging data-driven insights.
• Mentor and develop a team of data scientists, fostering a collaborative and innovative work environment.
• Stay ahead of industry trends and emerging data technologies, bringing fresh perspectives and solutions to the organization.

REQUIREMENTS:

• 4+ years in data science, with a strong preference for experience in the insurance or financial services sector.
• Experience working with LLMs and NLP frameworks such as Hugging Face or OpenAI is a strong advantage.
• Proven experience managing and mentoring a team of data professionals, with a commitment to fostering a collaborative environment.

If this role looks of interest, please apply here.

Please note: At this time, this role cannot offer sponsorship.

Lead Data Scientist

Up to £90,000

London (Remote/Hybrid)

Company:

Join a global financial platform offering fast, secure, and affordable money transfers, multi-currency wallets, and essential banking services worldwide, all within one app. You’ll be responsible for designing, building, and optimising credit and risk scoring models that drive key financial decisions across global markets.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the development and maintenance of credit risk and affordability models using bureau, open banking, and alternative behavioural data.
• Own end-to-end model lifecycle: data sourcing, feature engineering, model development, validation, and monitoring.
• Design and execute champion/challenger tests and A/B experiments to continuously improve approval rates, loss rates, and customer experience
• Analyse credit performance data to generate actionable insight and support strategic decisions
• Mentor and develop a small team of analysts/data scientists as the team scales
• Work closely with Data Engineering to deploy models into production pipelines.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to define modelling goals and interpret model outcomes in a business context.

Requirements:

• MSc or PhD Degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, Statistics or related fields.
• Strong coding skills in Python and SQL
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

**Please note that this role does not offer visa sponsorship**

How to Apply:

Please register your interest by sending your CV to Emily Burgess via the Apply link on this page

LEAD DATA SCIENTIST - Insurance

HYBRID - London

£80,000 - £100,000

We are working with a household name in the UK insurance space on the search for a Lead Data Scientist. They are looking for someone to help spearhead their Machine Learning Initiatives.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to be either a technical lead, or more of a people manager.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead the end-to-end design, development, and implementation of ML/AI models
• Develop and deploy Large Language Models (LLMs) and/or internal chatbot systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify opportunities for leveraging data-driven insights.
• Mentor and develop a team of data scientists, fostering a collaborative and innovative work environment.
• Stay ahead of industry trends and emerging data technologies, bringing fresh perspectives and solutions to the organization.

REQUIREMENTS:

• 4+ years in data science, with a strong preference for experience in the insurance or financial services sector.
• Experience working with LLMs and NLP frameworks such as Hugging Face or OpenAI is a strong advantage.
• Proven experience managing and mentoring a team of data professionals, with a commitment to fostering a collaborative environment.

If this role looks of interest, please apply here.

Please note: At this time, this role cannot offer sponsorship.

Lead Data Scientist

Up to £100,000

London (Remote/Hybrid)

Company:

This is a pre-seed startup on a mission to rethink how content gets made. The media landscape is more competitive than ever, and the old ways of creating and testing content just don’t cut it anymore. They’re using data and AI to shape stories that actually land with under-served audiences.

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with the founder to translate visionary ideas into practical, data-driven experiments and models.
• Analyse audience behaviour data and build AI-driven tools (like synthetic test groups) to predict content success.
• Collaborate with product, creative, and tech teams to embed data insights into content creation and decision-making.
• Identify data gaps and design tracking or instrumentation strategies to improve analytics capabilities.
• Stay hands-on with modelling and analysis while providing realistic guidance to keep projects focused and achievable.

Requirements:

• MSc or PhD Degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, Statistics or related fields.
• Strong coding skills in Python and SQL
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

**Please note that this role does not offer visa sponsorship**

How to Apply:

Please register your interest by sending your CV to Joseph Gregory via the Apply link on this page

Lead Data Scientist – ML Focused

Remote – UK

Up to £90,000 + Benefits

About the Role

We’re hiring a Lead Data Scientist to join a fast-growing, specialist data consultancy delivering high-impact solutions across sectors such as energy, public sector, manufacturing, and health. You’ll play a key role in solving complex challenges using cutting-edge ML or GenAI approaches, working end-to-end across projects in a client-facing capacity. This is a leadership position, ideal for someone who thrives in a consultancy environment and wants to deliver real-world impact.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and deliver data science solutions end-to-end, from discovery through deployment.
• Lead project teams, mentor junior colleagues, and manage delivery standards across multiple workstreams.
• Communicate complex findings clearly to senior stakeholders and clients.
• Support business development through proposal writing and pre-sales work.

We're looking for someone with:

• Proven experience delivering data science projects in a consultancy setting.
• Strong Python skills with experience in ML or GenAI (e.g. LLMs, prompt engineering, optimisation).
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management abilities.
• A track record of managing teams and shaping development roadmaps.
• experience with cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP), and familiarity with MLOps lifecycle or solution architecture.