Principal Specialist, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence
Ma'aden is hiring a Principal Specialist, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Level rates it ; you can apply on Level.
AI in this role
Lead advanced data science and artificial intelligence initiatives within the Agentic AI department to build decision intelligence products.
Why This Role Matters
This role leads advanced data science and analytics initiatives within the Agentic AI department, translating business problems into scalable analytical solutions, AI-enabled insights, predictive models, and decision intelligence products. It helps build enterprise capabilities that use trusted data, machine learning, automation, and agentic AI concepts to improve productivity, operational performance, and business decision-making.
What You Will Deliver
Lead Data Science and Analytics Solutions
Translate business priorities, operational challenges, and use cases into clear data science problem statements, analytical approaches, and measurable outcomes.
Design and deliver predictive, prescriptive, diagnostic, and exploratory analytics solutions that support decision-making across business and operational domains.
Develop machine learning models, statistical analyses, simulations, optimization approaches, and advanced analytics products using enterprise data assets.
Ensure analytical outputs are interpretable, actionable, repeatable, and aligned with business value, adoption needs, and governance requirements.
Enable Agentic AI and Intelligent Analytics
Support the development of agentic AI use cases by defining data, model, workflow, evaluation, and decision-support requirements.
Collaborate with AI engineers, platform teams, data engineers, and business stakeholders to embed analytics and machine learning into autonomous or semi-autonomous workflows.
Define evaluation approaches for AI-enabled insights, model performance, business impact, human oversight, and continuous improvement.
Promote responsible use of agentic AI by ensuring transparency, explainability, control, auditability, and fit-for-purpose model deployment.
Advance Data Products and Decision Intelligence
Create reusable analytical assets, data science patterns, feature logic, model components, and decision intelligence products that can scale across business domains.
Partner with data platform, governance, and architecture teams to ensure data products are trusted, well-documented, reusable, and operationally maintainable.
Integrate analytics into dashboards, workflows, applications, copilots, and AI agents where decision support can improve speed, quality, and productivity.
Maintain clear documentation covering assumptions, data sources, model logic, limitations, controls, and expected business usage.
Ensure Model Quality, Governance and Value Realization
Apply appropriate data science governance practices for model validation, performance monitoring, bias checks, versioning, deployment readiness, and lifecycle management.
Define success measures, impact metrics, adoption criteria, and benefit tracking approaches for analytics and AI-enabled solutions.
Monitor solution performance after deployment and recommend improvements based on usage, feedback, model drift, data quality, and business impact.
Ensure data science and analytics solutions remain compliant with data governance, cybersecurity, privacy, and responsible AI expectations.
Provide Technical Leadership and Stakeholder Advisory
Provide expert guidance to analysts, data scientists, engineers, and business teams on analytical methods, model design, evaluation, and adoption.
Advise stakeholders on what analytics or AI can realistically solve, required data readiness, implementation complexity, and expected value.
Review analytical designs, model outputs, assumptions, and recommendations to ensure technical quality and business relevance.
Communicate insights, risks, limitations, and recommended actions clearly to technical, operational, and executive stakeholders.
What Success Looks Like
Business problems are translated into clear data science use cases, analytical approaches, and measurable value outcomes.
Predictive, prescriptive, and decision intelligence solutions are delivered with strong technical quality and practical business relevance.
Agentic AI use cases are supported with trusted data, robust models, evaluation methods, controls, and human oversight where required.
Analytics and AI products are reusable, documented, governed, monitored, and aligned with responsible AI expectations.
Stakeholders receive clear insights, recommendations, and decision support that improve productivity, performance, and adoption.
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related discipline. Master’s Degree is preferred.
Experience
Minimum 10 years of experience in data science, advanced analytics, machine learning, AI solution delivery, decision intelligence, or data product development.
Strong experience translating business requirements into analytical solutions, developing models, evaluating performance, and deploying analytics into operational workflows.
Experience with agentic AI, generative AI, MLOps, responsible AI, cloud data platforms, or enterprise analytics environments is preferred.
Skills That Matter
Advanced data science, machine learning, statistical modeling, optimization, simulation, and predictive analytics
Agentic AI concepts, generative AI, decision intelligence, AI workflow design, and model evaluation
Python, SQL, analytics platforms, notebooks, visualization tools, cloud data platforms, and MLOps practices
Data preparation, feature engineering, model validation, performance monitoring, drift detection, and lifecycle management
Responsible AI, explainability, transparency, bias awareness, human oversight, and governance controls
Data product thinking, reusable analytical assets, documentation, scalability, and operationalization
Business problem framing, stakeholder advisory, insight storytelling, and value realization tracking
Ability to coach teams, review analytical work, manage ambiguity, and communicate with technical and executive audiences
Benefits
1. Career Growth2. Competitive Salaries
3. Comprehensive Package
4. Inclusive Work Environment
5. Work-Life Balance
6. Employee wellness
How we rate this
Principal Specialist, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence at Ma'aden rates 85 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Open the description and count.
Prepare for this job
A free preview built only from this posting: what it asks for, what you could be asked in an interview, and how to adjust your resume.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- How do you monitor a model once it's live, and how do you know it needs retraining?
- How do you decide that one model's output is better than another's for a given task?
- How do you think about the risk of an AI system in this kind of role failing silently?
- Tell me about a project where data science was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, ML Ops, AI Evaluation, AI Safety, and Data Science. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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