Senior Data Scientist, Operations Research & Machine Learning

The Senior Data Scientist will join the dynamic Enterprise Data & Advanced Analytics team within Data & Technology that applies data, analytics and AI to develop scalable business-first solutions for sustainable growth at OMERS. The Senior Enterprise Data Scientist will partner with business and corporate functions to design, develop, and scale Optimization/Operations Research and Machine Learning products.

Reporting to the Director of Enterprise Data Science, you will work closely with our Businesses, Corporate Functions, Enterprise Architecture, Business Relationship Management, Cyber, Data Engineering, Data Governance, and Strategy teams to deploy new capabilities following leading product management and engineering methodologies. You will develop and nurture strong relationships with partners in a variety of different business units across our global portfolio and elevate the understanding & application of these capabilities across the company.

As a member of this team, you will

• Build and maintain NLP models using state of the art techniques like transformers for the purposes of classification, sentiment analysis, entity extraction, and more
• Drive the implementation of corporate/strategic objectives via AI/ML driven projects and discovering opportunities
• Design and implement Optimization & Machine Learning solutions to improve decision-making processes
• Remain on the “leading edge” of emerging data, optimization and AI technologies and techniques to identify and implement novel tools and techniques and their application to new use cases and deployment opportunities
• Provide guidance to the team by drawing on the understanding of business and technology objectives, available technology functionality, business impact and resource capacity
• Lead projects from experiments and hands-on solutioning through to production
• Hands on creation and oversight of models, conducting model training, validation, testing and ongoing data and model integrity maintenance
• Mentor junior data scientists and the data science community at large and participate in continuous self-learning and mentorship
• Perform data preprocessing, feature engineering, and selection to ensure the quality and relevance of input data for modeling and, if relevant, optimization tasks
• Drive a culture of innovation and AI by taking initiatives for activities such as lunch and learns, hackathons, paper readouts, etc.

To succeed in this role, you have

• 3-5+ years of experience leading and delivering enterprise-scale operations research/ML projects and facilitating collaboration across teams
• Strong understanding of various optimization techniques, including linear programming, integer programming etc. along with optimization tools (e.g., Gurobi, CPLEX) is a huge plus
• Minimum eight (8) years’ experience working in an Operations Research/ Machine Learning environment
• The ability to build relationships and facilitate across a diverse group of stakeholders in several different business units
• Experience within Pensions, Investments and Commercial Real Estate sectors along with logistics, supply chain is an asset
• Experience with framework such as TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, and others
• Hands-on experience with big data systems such as Spark, Hadoop, Hive and ideally cloud platforms such as Azure, GCP, AWS, etc.
• Effective communication skills to convey complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Master's or PhD degree in Mathematics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or a related field, ideally with a focus on machine learning or optimization, or a combination of both
• Recent experience with distillation of NLP tasks from larger models to task specific smaller models is an asset
• Polished written and verbal communication and presentation skills targeted at all levels of the organization
• Proficiency with git
• Demonstrated experience as a leader in creatively addressing unique or ambiguous situations and motivating teams and delivering multiple projects simultaneously serving multiple stakeholders
• Proven track record of designing, implementing, and deploying machine learning models and/or optimization solutions to address real-world problems
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, along with experience using machine learning libraries and frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn)
• Solid knowledge of statistical analysis and experimental design to evaluate model and algorithm performance effectively

Our story

Founded in 1962, OMERS is one of Canada’s largest defined benefit pension plans, with $127.4 billion in net assets as at June 30, 2023. OMERS is a jointly-sponsored pension plan, with more than 1,000 participating employers ranging from large cities to local agencies, and over half a million active, deferred and retired members. OMERS members include union and non-union employees of municipalities, school boards, local boards, transit systems, electrical utilities, emergency services and children’s aid societies across Ontario. Contributions to the Plan are funded equally by members and employers. OMERS teams work in Toronto, London, New York, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Singapore, Sydney and other major cities across North America and Europe – serving members and employers and originating and managing a diversified portfolio of high-quality investments in public markets, private equity, infrastructure and real estate.

OMERS is committed to having a workforce that reflects the communities in which we live and work. We are an equal opportunity employer committed to a barrier-free recruitment and selection process. At OMERS inclusion and diversity means belonging. How we create a sense of belonging is through our employees and our vast network of Employee Resource Groups. Whether you are passionate about gender, pride, or visible minorities, we have groups that are focused on making a difference in all of our lives.