Lead Data Scientist – IP Development for Strategic Markets
Within the Data Science team of the Strategic Markets business unit at LSEG, we build proprietary data science solutions for a cluster of high-growth, fast-evolving markets spanning Sustainable Finance & Investment (SFI), Islamic Finance, emerging market exchanges, and international localisation. These markets have quickly shifting needs, data landscapes that are less standardised than established markets, and the problems we are solving for are genuinely novel.
This is a senior IP development role with a leadership dimension. You'll be setting direction, supervising and executing on research, design, and evaluation of solutions that address real gaps in these markets, from carbon emissions modelling to ESG data extraction from company filings, to data solutions that work across diverse regulatory and cultural contexts. Critically, you'll also be shaping how we build: mentoring junior team members, helping define our methodological and technical standards, and contributing to a product vision that is coherent across the portfolio of solutions we develop.
You'll work closely with Subject Matter Experts, product leads, and senior business stakeholders, not just to validate technical approaches, but to help define what the right problems to solve are in the first place. You'll bring an opinion on roadmap priorities, technical feasibility versus business value, and represent the team credibly in senior conversations.
We're looking for someone who combines deep technical craft with the maturity to lead others and influence the direction of the work. Research and development remains at the core of the role, but at this level, impact also comes from the work you enable in others and the product-focused mindset you bring to the table.
What You'll Be Doing
Research & IP Development
- Lead the research, design and build of advanced NLP and data science solutions targeting challenges in fast-moving, non-standard markets, including carbon emissions estimation, company-specific data extraction from filings and websites, and solutions adapted to diverse market contexts.
- Set the technical direction and quality bar for IP development work within the team.
- Stay current with the latest developments in data science, GenAI/LLMs, NLP, and competitor offerings, and actively translate those developments into actionable opportunities for the team.
- Collaborate with internal Subject Matter Experts to ensure solutions are methodologically sound and aligned with real market needs.
People Leadership & Team Development
- Supervise and mentor a small and growing team of data scientists, initially one direct report, with the expectation that this will expand to two in the near term as the team develops.
- Provide technical guidance, review work, and actively support the professional development of direct reports.
- Act as a role model for rigorous, end-to-end thinking, from problem framing through to production impact.
- Contribute to hiring and onboarding of new team members as the team grows.
Product & Solution Design
- Bring a product mindset to IP development: think beyond individual models to consider how our solution offering can be coherent and scalable.
- Partner with product managers and business leads to shape roadmap priorities, contribute to business cases, and ensure technical decisions are grounded in customer value.
Stakeholder Engagement & Influence
- Build and maintain relationships with key internal stakeholders across Technology, Content Operations, Product, and the business units we serve, acting as a trusted technical partner rather than a pure delivery resource.
- Negotiate scope, timelines, and technical trade-offs with stakeholders at varying levels of seniority, balancing competing priorities while maintaining quality.
- Represent the team credibly in senior forums, communicating strategic options and risk trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Proactively identify and surface strategic risks, not just project-level blockers, and work with leadership to develop mitigation approaches.
Production & Engineering
- Take ownership of solutions from prototype through to production, including production-ready handoffs, scalability, and ongoing quality.
- Define and champion standards for model monitoring, documentation, and production readiness across the team's portfolio of solutions.
Data & Analysis
- Identify and assess relevant data sources; develop and maintain data queries and pipelines.
- Analyse data, identify patterns, and ensure designs are practical, customer-focused, and production-ready.
- Integrate internal and external data sources into end-to-end pipelines for solution development.
Location: Bucharest, hybrid, with a general expectation of 2 to 3 days per week in office. You'll be joining an international team spread across the New York, Paris, Bucharest and Singapore
Career Stage: Manager
Join us and be part of a team that values innovation, quality, and continuous improvement. If you're ready to take your career to the next level and make a significant impact, we'd love to hear from you.
LSEG is a leading global financial markets infrastructure and data provider. Our purpose driving financial stability, empowering economies and enabling customers to create sustainable growth.
Our purpose is the foundation on which our culture is built. Our values of Integrity, Partnership, Excellence and Change underpin our purpose and set the standard for everything we do, every day. They go to the heart of who we are and guide our decision making and everyday actions.
Working with us means that you will be part of a dynamic organisation of 25,000 people across 65 countries. However, we will value your individuality and enable you to bring your true self to work so you can help enrich our diverse workforce.
We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. This means that we do not discriminate on the basis of anyone’s race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy or disability, or any other basis protected under applicable law. Conforming with applicable law, we can reasonably accommodate applicants' and employees' religious practices and beliefs, as well as mental health or physical disability needs.
You will be part of a collaborative and creative culture where we encourage new ideas. We are committed to sustainability across our global business and we are proud to partner with our customers to help them meet their sustainability objectives. Our charity, the LSEG Foundation provides charitable grants to community groups that help people access economic opportunities and build a secure future with financial independence. Colleagues can get involved through fundraising and volunteering.
LSEG offers a range of tailored benefits and support, including healthcare, retirement planning, paid volunteering days and wellbeing initiatives.
What We're Looking For
Essential
- Bachelor's, Master's or PhD in Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning, or a related field.
- 7+ years of experience as a Data Scientist, with a strong emphasis on NLP, GenAI, machine learning, or advanced analytics.
- Hands-on experience building and deploying LLM-based solutions in commercial products or platforms.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring or managing data scientists or ML engineers, with the ability to develop technical talent and hold a quality bar.
- Strong Python skills: data analysis (pandas/polars), SQL and API querying, modular programming, and performance optimisation.
- Solid grounding in statistics, machine learning, model evaluation, and classical NLP techniques.
- Demonstrated ability to engage and influence senior stakeholders, including shaping problem definitions, negotiating priorities, and building long-term working relationships.
- Proven ability to connect technical decisions to business outcomes, including experience contributing to product roadmap discussions or business case development.
- Proficiency with Git, Docker, and cloud platforms (AWS or Azure).
- Ability to produce clear technical and non-technical documentation and presentations.
Nice to Have
- Familiarity with any of the markets we serve: SFI/ESG, Islamic Finance or emerging markets
- Experience with interactive UI development (Gradio, Streamlit, Dash).
- Experience with model monitoring tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases).
- Experience with agentic AI workflows.
- Prior research experience in machine learning or NLP.
- Experience in a matrix organisation or working across business units, where influence without formal authority was required.
