Data Scientist

Experis is hiring an Applied AI Data Scientist to create and evaluate LLM-powered solutions that improve technical support workflows. This is a 100% onsite role in Durham, NC, focused on practical AI engineering: building assistants, implementing RAG and tool usage, and proving impact with rigorous evaluation. If you enjoy turning support data into reliable AI experiences, you will have a clear path from design through validation and integration.

Compensation for this W2 position is $60 to $65 per hour. The role centers on systematic experimentation to compare prompts, models, retrieval strategies, and workflow designs, then partner across teams to ship validated solutions.

What you’ll do

• Design and develop LLM-powered solutions for technical support workflows, including case classification, information retrieval, response drafting, summarization, and agent assistance.
• Build and enhance AI assistants using prompt engineering, tool calling, RAG, and orchestration techniques.
• Create evaluation frameworks and datasets to measure accuracy, relevance, groundedness, task completion, latency, and safety.
• Run model evaluations and controlled experiments to compare prompts, models, retrieval strategies, and workflow designs.
• Work with support teams and subject matter experts to identify business needs, curate knowledge sources, and define success criteria and escalation paths.
• Analyze structured and unstructured data, including support tickets, conversations, and knowledge articles.
• Monitor AI performance, diagnose failure patterns, and iterate on prompts, retrieval methods, data quality, and safeguards.
• Apply responsible AI practices, including data privacy, security, transparency, human oversight, and bias testing.
• Communicate findings, technical limitations, and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Collaborate with software and data engineering teams to integrate validated AI solutions into existing systems.

What you’ll need

• Hands-on experience with Generative AI, LLMs, and LLM-powered applications.
• Experience building, testing, or evaluating AI assistants using systematic testing, human review, error analysis, and iterative improvement.
• Strong understanding of prompt engineering and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), including embeddings, vector search, and model selection.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL for analysis, prototyping, and evaluation.
• Strong knowledge of statistics, experimental design, machine learning, and model performance measurement.
• Familiarity with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and text data preparation and analysis.
• Experience working with AI APIs, frameworks, or orchestration tools.
• Understanding of responsible AI, data privacy, security, and governance practices.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with technical support, customer service, support tickets, or knowledge management systems.
• Familiarity with cloud data platforms, data visualization, and production AI monitoring.
• Experience defining evaluation metrics and improving LLM response quality, reliability, and groundedness.
• Knowledge of data governance and responsible AI principles.

Location: Durham, NC 27709. Work arrangement: 100% onsite.

Education & experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum 7 years of professional experience in data science, applied machine learning, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated experience delivering data science or AI solutions and evaluating performance in real-world applications.
• Hands-on experience with Generative AI or LLM-based applications, including understanding model limitations and the importance of evaluation and human oversight.

Technologies: Generative AI, LLMs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), prompt engineering, embeddings, vector search, Python, SQL, Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI APIs.