Intellectica is recruiting an experienced and highly skilled Principal Data Scientist on behalf of a newly established AI & Machine Learning startup, which will be integrated into a leading group of companies operating in the aerospace, defense, and high-technology sector. This startup aims to develop cutting-edge AI-driven solutions tailored to the aerospace and defense industry. This role reports directly to the CTO and plays a central role in defining and executing the company’s data science strategy.
Key activities and responsibilities of this role include:
- Architecting innovative data science solutions that ensure scalability, robustness, and reliability across diverse domains
- Leading product-level modeling strategies end-to-end, from research and prototyping to production deployment and monitoring
- Defining and promoting best practices across the data science lifecycle, aligned with the company’s MLOps operating model
- Coaching and mentoring senior data scientists, fostering skill development and consistency across teams
- Collaborating with ML and Site Reliability Engineers to shape the AI infrastructure roadmap and technology portfolio
- Advising on business development strategy, identifying market opportunities where AI offers a competitive edge
- Translating complex operational challenges into data-driven solutions for public sector clients and partners
- Driving exploration and adoption of emerging technologies such as distributed LLM inference, foundational model fine-tuning, and simulation-based ML
- Contributing to the development of Verification & Validation methods for AI in safety- and mission-critical contexts
- Ensuring secure and responsible use of AI across all projects
- Representing the company in external conferences, expert panels, and consortia, leading thought leadership in defense-focused AI
Professional experience & qualifications of a successful candidate:
- PhD or equivalent graduate degree in Data Science, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Statistics, Informatics, or a related quantitative field
- Minimum 8 years of experience in advanced data science and machine learning, with a strong track record of production-level solution delivery
- Deep proficiency in Python and its ML ecosystem (e.g., Pandas, NumPy, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face)
- Expertise in full ML workflows including data engineering, model design, training, deployment, and lifecycle management
- Proven experience with large-scale or distributed ML systems (e.g., Ray, PyTorch Lightning, Horovod)
- Demonstrated proficiency in at least two of the following: large language models, computer vision, multimodal learning, generative AI
- Hands-on experience integrating ML models into operational systems with real-time performance monitoring
- Familiarity with cloud-native and high-performance computing environments (AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-prem HPC)
- Experience with computer vision algorithms (e.g., R-CNN, YOLO)
- Proficient in Greek and English
Core competencies of a successful candidate:
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to engage effectively with internal and external stakeholders across all levels
- Strategic thinker with ability to align research with mission needs
- Inspiring leader and mentor across data science teams
- Fast and creative prototype builder
- Decisive in ambiguous, high-stakes situations
- Resilient and adaptable in dynamic environments
- Collaborative and alignment-driven across teams and partners
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