Principal Data Scientist

About SEEK

SEEK’s portfolio of diverse businesses make a positive impact on a truly global scale. Our purpose is to help people live more fulfilling and productive working lives and help organisations succeed. We create world-class technology solutions to connect more people to relevant employment, education, small business and volunteer opportunities. We have a culture of high-performance in our workplaces and celebrate the diversity of our employees who contribute to the success of our organisation.

Life at SEEK

SEEK’s purpose is at the centre of everything we do. Our SEEK, which defines the way we work, is all about what makes us unique and a little bit different. Passion, Team, Delivery and Future are our principles that drive innovation and creativity. SEEK strives to support employee wellbeing by providing an amazing experience at work which led us to being named AFR BOSS Top 10 Best Places to Work in Technology (2021-2024). We are proud to work in an environment that's inclusive where everyone's unique ideas, experiences and perspectives are valued.

Our award-winning head office in Cremorne (just a 4 min walk from Richmond station) provides an exceptional space to collaborate with colleagues. The building provides sweeping views of the city, a games area, sit and stand desks at every workstation, modern end-of-trip facilities and Thursday night drinks which gives our people an opportunity to connect in a social setting.

The Role

We’re looking for a Principal Data Scientist to set the technical direction for how we build end-to-end, data-driven products that create tangible value for hirers and job seekers. In this role, you’ll lead the design of the inference and decisioning layers across our most critical AI/ML products, shaping how SEEK understands supply and demand dynamics in the marketplace and informing high‑impact decisions across the business. You will be a force multiplier: developing technical strategy, uplifting standards and practices across multiple teams, and partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Strategy, and Commercial leaders to deliver measurable business outcomes.

You thrive in a complex, fast-moving environment and operate comfortably across ambiguity, aligning stakeholders on direction, navigating dependencies, shaping estimation and delivery plans, and communicating trade-offs clearly. You remain hands-on where it matters—diving deep into models, methods, and data quality—while cultivating a culture of continuous learning and scientific rigor across the Data Science community.

On any given day, you might:

• Evaluate and guide the development of statistically sound, pragmatic models and decision systems, balancing performance, risk, and operational constraints.

• Prototype and assess new approaches to unlock step-change improvements on core business problems, and articulate the value, assumptions, and limitations to senior stakeholders.

• Partner with Product Managers, Strategy, Architecture, and Commercial teams to refine problem framing and align roadmaps to the highest value opportunities.

• Collaborate with an Experimentation team to design, instrument, and interpret A/B and quasi-experiments; set best practices for causal inference and robust measurement.

• Mentor and sponsor data scientists — reviewing methodologies, validating outputs, and raising standards for reliability, scalability, and ethical use.

• Shape and guide end-to-end AI/ML solutions with Engineering and Product—spanning data readiness, simplicity, feature pipelines, model lifecycle, observability, and governance.

Your closest collaborators will include senior peers across the Data Science stream, stream leads who bring Data Science, Engineering, and Product perspectives to joint problem-solving, and squad leads driving contributions across SEEK’s broader AI initiatives. You will also influence cross-stream forums to ensure coherence in technical approaches and reuse of foundational capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the technical strategy for a focus area (e.g., pricing, market position, ad performance), ensuring data and modelling work directly serve business outcomes and risk thresholds.

• Build a deep understanding of SEEK’s data assets and systems and champion the data quality, observability, and documentation required for robust decisioning at scale.

• Translate ambiguous, high-value business problems into actionable requirements, clarifying value, assumptions, and constraints; drive alignment on approach and success measures.

• Establish and uphold modelling and experimentation standards (evaluation protocols, causal inference patterns, offline/online validation, guardrails) across multiple squads.

• Provide technical leadership and coaching to data scientists and leads; review solution designs and code where appropriate; foster a culture of scientific rigor, safety, and learning.

• Partner on roadmaps and OKRs, influencing prioritisation and sequencing across teams; balance exploration with reliability and scale in production environments.

• Communicate complex concepts to a wide range of audiences—executives, Product, Engineering, and other functions—tailoring depth and framing to drive clear decisions.

Qualifications

• Extensive (typically 10+ years) commercial experience building and evolving data-driven products, with deep, hands-on expertise in machine learning algorithms, decision systems, and model performance tuning at scale.

• Proven track record operating as a bridge across Data Science, Product, Architecture, and Engineering, solving complex commercial problems and influencing strategy.

• Experience leading through influence across multiple teams or managing a high-performing team of Data Scientists; delivery of large, complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives.

• High proficiency with Python, SQL, and Spark for data extraction and processing; strong fluency with modern software practices and tooling (e.g., Git, AWS, Databricks, MLflow or equivalents).

• Exceptional communication and stakeholder influence skills; ability to operate confidently amid ambiguity, set direction, and drive alignment across functions.

• Comfortable in a *nix command-line environment; postgraduate qualification in a quantitative discipline (e.g., Physics, Mathematics, Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Engineering) or equivalent industry experience.

Permanent Perks
At SEEK we offer:

• Annual Performance Bonus Plan
• Support of flexible working, including a mix of office and work from home days depending on your role.
• Paid and unpaid leave benefits including Personal Flexi Days and Volunteer Days, as well as the opportunity to purchase additional leave
• Support for parents with 14 weeks paid primary carers leave and 2 weeks paid leave for partners

At SEEK, we are passionate about fostering a culture of inclusion and wellbeing that embraces and values the diversity of our people. We are a purpose driven business that works with heart.

We know teams with diverse ideas, experiences and perspectives are more creative and are critical to ensuring effective delivery and innovating to enable our future success. As such, we welcome applications from people with diverse backgrounds and life experiences, especially as they relate to gender, sexual identity, culture, faith, disability and life stages. If you have the skills, curiosity and an adaptable mindset but don't meet every responsibility or qualification listed in this advertisement, please still get in touch with us.

Should you require any specific support or adjustments throughout the recruitment process and beyond, please advise us and we will be happy to assist.

For this role, only those candidates with the eligible right to work will be considered.

SEEK kindly requests no unsolicited resumes or approaches from recruitment agencies and will not be responsible for any associated fees.