Principal Data Scientist

About Position:
As the Lead Data Scientist, you will define the enterprise AI vision and spearhead research-to-production initiatives across Generative AI, LLM fine-tuning, and agentic AI systems—delivering measurable business outcomes at scale through strong technical leadership, governance, and cross-functional influence.
Role: Principal Data Scientist
Location: Pune
Experience: 15+ years
Job Type: Full Time Employment
What You'll Do:
Own and evolve the organization’s AI/ML strategy and multi-year roadmap, identifying high-impact opportunities across generative AI, large language models, multimodal systems, and autonomous/agentic workflows
Lead, coach, and grow a high-performing data science organization (hiring, mentoring, performance development), setting technical standards and career paths for senior ICs and managers
Set research and engineering priorities across model development, fine-tuning (SFT/RLHF/RLAIF), retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation, and agent architectures—balancing innovation, risk, and time-to-value
Define target-state architecture for AI platforms (MLOps/LLMOps, feature store, model registry, observability), ensuring security, privacy, compliance, and responsible AI practices
Partner with product, engineering, legal, security, and business leaders to translate ambiguous problems into scalable AI solutions with clear success metrics and adoption plans
Establish best practices for experimentation, model risk management, evaluation benchmarks, and production monitoring (quality, latency, cost, drift), enabling reliable and repeatable delivery
Represent the organization with executive presence in client forums, industry conferences, and academic partnerships; contribute to thought leadership, patents, and publications where relevant
Expertise You'll Bring:
Master’s / PhD or BTech in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, or a related field (or equivalent, demonstrable industry expertise)
8+ years building and shipping ML systems, with significant experience leading large, cross-functional AI teams and influencing product/engineering roadmaps
Deep expertise in generative AI and foundation models, including prompt engineering, RAG, fine-tuning, evaluation, and agentic architectures; strong grasp of reinforcement learning concepts and trade-offs
Proven experience designing and operating enterprise ML/GenAI platforms (MLOps/LLMOps), scaling training/inference, optimizing cost and latency, and ensuring reliability and observability in production
Strong record of innovation (publications/patents/open-source contributions) and/or demonstrable industry impact through successful delivery of AI products at scale
Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills—able to align executives and delivery teams, explain complex topics clearly, and drive decisions through crisp narratives and data.
Benefits:
Competitive salary and benefits package
Culture focused on talent development with quarterly growth opportunities and company-sponsored higher education and certifications
Opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies
Employee engagement initiatives such as project parties, flexible work hours, and Long Service awards
Annual health check-ups
Insurance coverage: group term life, personal accident, and Mediclaim hospitalization for self, spouse, two children, and parents
Values-Driven, People-Centric & Inclusive Work Environment:
Persistent is dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We invite applications from all qualified individuals, including those with disabilities, and regardless of gender or gender preference. We welcome diverse candidates from all backgrounds.
We support hybrid work and flexible hours to fit diverse lifestyles.
Our office is accessibility-friendly, with ergonomic setups and assistive technologies to support employees with physical disabilities.
If you are a person with disabilities and have specific requirements, please inform us during the application process or at any time during your employment
Let’s unleash your full potential at Persistent - persistent.com/careers
“Persistent is an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind.”

Work arrangement
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