Senior Data Scientist (AI & ML)

About the company

talabat began in Kuwait in 2004 and has grown into a major on-demand food and Q-commerce platform serving everyday delivery needs across eight countries in the region. The company focuses on using technology and local market insight to make life easier for customers, help restaurant and shop partners run more efficiently, and create dependable earning opportunities for riders. With a team of 6,000+ people, talabat emphasizes high performance, strong engagement, and a culture that aims to make a positive impact.

Role overview

As a Senior AI Scientist in the global AI hub, you will help improve decision-making across product and business areas by turning data into reliable, actionable insight. You will own a domain end to end, work closely with product and business stakeholders, and collaborate with data scientists and data engineers. Your scope will cover the full data value chain, from logging and modeling to analysis, reporting, and experimentation. A major part of the role will involve applying Generative AI to use cases such as data enrichment, smarter content interpretation, and automated decision support.

Key responsibilities

• Turn unclear business challenges into measurable questions backed by data.
• Choose practical, effective algorithms to solve complex business problems and create value.
• Build and deploy machine learning and Generative AI solutions in production environments.
• Develop strong domain knowledge around the product journeys and business workflows in your area.
• Understand source data and how it is produced through documentation review, engineering collaboration, and structured data profiling.
• Help design and maintain data models that track performance and explain the drivers behind it.
• Partner with product and business teams to frame the most important questions for data analysis.
• Produce clear, accurate, and actionable insights and recommendations through deep analysis and automated reporting.
• Plan, run, and interpret experiments including A/B tests and multivariate tests.
• Support KPI design and goal setting for product and business leaders.
• Mentor fellow data scientists and support their professional growth.
• Contribute to better processes, tools, and internal learning programs.

Technical requirements

• Hands-on background in machine learning, Generative AI, deep learning, recommendation systems, pattern recognition, data mining, and artificial intelligence.
• Strong experience with ML and GenAI tools and frameworks such as Scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost, SVMs, Keras, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, and LLM fine-tuning.
• Excellent SQL skills.
• Ability to perform reproducible data analysis using Python or R.
• Working knowledge of data modeling and dimensional design.
• Strong command of the full data lifecycle, including framing the problem, auditing data, analyzing results, interpreting findings, making recommendations, and presenting them.
• Comfort with descriptive, exploratory, inferential, causal, and predictive analysis methods.
• Solid understanding of experiment design, experiment analysis, and statistical techniques.
• Familiarity with product data such as impressions and events, and product health metrics such as conversion, engagement, and retention.
• Exposure to LLM and NLP-based approaches for data enrichment and intelligent automation is advantageous.
• Familiarity with BigQuery and Google Cloud Platform is an added benefit.
• Experience in data engineering or pipeline development, including tools like Airflow, is a plus.

Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science, technology, or a related discipline is required.
• A postgraduate degree is welcome but not mandatory.
• At least 5 years of experience in data science, machine learning, and Generative AI.
• Experience applying data science in an online consumer product environment is preferred.
• Strong problem-solving ability with a practical, resourceful mindset.
• Clear communication and strong collaboration skills.
• High ownership, accountability, and a keep-it-simple approach to execution.

Additional information

This is a full-time onsite position based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.