Data Science Lead

Job description

Data Science Lead
ARC (a division of Badger SA) | George, Western Cape | Permanent | On-site

Lead AI that delivers real business impact:

• At ARC, we're building the next generation of data, analytics and AI capabilities for Badger Holdings, including dotsure.co.za and Pacific International Insurance. Our mission is simple: use intelligent technology to create smarter decisions, better customer experiences and stronger businesses
• We're looking for an experienced Data Science Lead to lead our Data Science team while remaining deeply involved in solving complex business problems through machine learning and AI.
• This is a true player-coach opportunity. You'll guide a talented team, shape technical direction and personally deliver high-impact machine learning solutions from concept through to production.

What you'll do:

As our Data Science Lead, you'll lead a team of three Data Scientists and one Machine Learning Engineer while driving strategic AI initiatives across the business.

You'll:

• Lead the end-to-end delivery of machine learning and AI projects from business discovery through deployment and monitoring.
• Build, validate and deploy predictive models across customer lifetime value (CLV), fraud detection, lapse prediction, pricing optimisation, claims prediction and customer segmentation.
• Work closely with stakeholders across underwriting, claims, finance and operations to identify high-value opportunities.
• Translate commercial challenges into scalable data science solutions.
• Ensure models are production-ready, explainable, governed and deliver measurable business value.
• Present insights and recommendations to senior leadership and executive stakeholders.
• Mentor, coach and develop the Data Science team while establishing technical best practices.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering and ML Engineering to deliver robust AI solutions.
• Contribute to ARC's evolving AI ecosystem across Azure, GCP and modern cloud data platforms.

What we're looking for:

You'll thrive in this role if you combine technical excellence with strong leadership and commercial thinking.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering or a related quantitative discipline.
• A postgraduate qualification in a relevant field is advantageous.
• Relevant cloud, AI or machine learning certifications (Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, Databricks or Snowflake) will be advantageous.

Essential experience:

• 5+ years' experience in Data Science, Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence.
• Previous experience leading or mentoring Data Science teams.
• Proven success delivering production machine learning models with measurable business impact.
• Strong Python and SQL skills.
• Experience across supervised, unsupervised and time-series modelling techniques.
• Experience owning the full machine learning lifecycle from problem definition to production deployment.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and business partnering skills.
• Experience presenting technical concepts to senior leadership and non-technical audiences.

Knowledge of cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

• Understanding of model governance, explainability and responsible AI.

Highly advantageous:

• Insurance or financial services experience.
• Experience with fraud detection, customer propensity, churn or CLV modelling.
• MLOps and production deployment pipelines.
• Snowflake, dbt or modern cloud data platforms.
• Azure ML, Vertex AI, BigQuery ML or Databricks.
• Exposure to Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs) or AI Agent frameworks.
• Experience working within regulated environments (POPIA, FAIS, TCF).

The kind of leader we're looking for:

• You're someone who enjoys building as much as leading.
• You lead by example, enjoy solving complex business problems, and are motivated by seeing your models deployed into production where they create measurable value.
• You communicate confidently with both technical teams and business stakeholders, develop those around you, and continuously look for better ways to apply AI to real-world challenges.

Why join ARC?

This is an opportunity to shape the future of AI within a growing organisation that is investing heavily in data and intelligent technologies.

You'll have the opportunity to:

• Lead meaningful AI initiatives with visible commercial impact.
• Stay hands-on with data science while growing your leadership career.
• Work with modern cloud technologies including Python, Azure, Snowflake, dbt and GCP.
• Influence AI strategy across multiple businesses.
• Build and mentor a high-performing data science team.
• See your work move beyond experimentation into production.

Location:

This permanent role is based in George, Western Cape and is an on-site position. Relocation support may be considered for the right candidate.
If you're passionate about applying AI to solve real business problems, enjoy leading high-performing teams and want to build technology that makes a measurable difference, we'd love to hear from you.

Posted on 04 Sep 10:35, Closing date 3 Oct