Lead Data Scientist, AI Labs
Core
Lead data science expertise for NPR's AI Labs to overhaul content metadata and power audience-focused personalization engines using fine-tuned foundational models.
Role type
Lead Data Scientist (AI/LLM specialization)
Builds
Production-grade metadata generation pipelines, recommendation frameworks, and secure cloud deployments for public media.
Domain
Public media, journalism, and artificial intelligence
Deliverable
production ML models | product features
Required skills
Large Language Model (LLM) fine-tuning and evaluation, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and audio preprocessing, large-scale data architecture and vector databases, production recommendation engine design, cloud ML workflow deployment (Azure/AWS/GCP), algorithmic bias mitigation, RAG patterns and semantic search, SQL and cloud data warehousing (BigQuery/Snowflake), Python and agentic engineering frameworks
Preferred skills
Experience with unstructured multimedia and digital audio processing, prior work in media organizations or public service institutions, automated LLM evaluation gates in CI/CD pipelines
Technologies
Python, LLMs, vector search engines, BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure, AWS, GCP
Responsibilities
Lead selection and optimization of open-source and proprietary LLMs for NPR's content voice; Design automated ML pipelines for semantic metadata generation from audio and text; Architect recommendation frameworks for audience personalization; Construct self-service data pipelines and analytics models in BigQuery; Prototype API-driven tooling for newsroom research; Establish evaluation frameworks to ensure factual accuracy and neutrality; Audit and mitigate algorithmic bias in AI systems; Ensure secure and cost-effective scaling of AI applications; Leverage metadata for user lifecycle retention and segmentation
Seniority
Senior, hands-on IC with leadership responsibilities
