Data Science Specialist

**JR101914**

**Data Science Specialist**

**Location: Toronto-661 University**

**Department: Data Science and Analytics**

**The Role**:
**Key Responsibilities-**
- Lead the design and execution of data science analyses and modelling projects, including developing code, producing reports, building analytic tools for internal and external clients/partners, and creating detailed documentation to ensure transparency and reproducibility.
- Assist the manager in defining business requirements for the infrastructure, software, and resource requirements to build the department up to be the centre of excellence in a hub and spoke model.
- Build and optimize end-to-end machine learning and data pipelines, encompassing data ingestion, feature engineering, model training, evaluation, and deployment using Azure Machine Learning Studio, or equivalent.
- Leverage cloud platforms (e.g., Azure and Databricks) for the development, deployment and monitoring of end-to-end machine learning solutions.
- Provide guidance on complex technical projects, ensuring high-quality output.
- Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams, including those within Enterprise Technology and Cyber Security and Architecture, Digital Governance and Digital Public Health to ensure successful deployment of models into production environments.
- Enhance the capacity of PHO’s AI capabilities, identifies potential opportunities for the use of techniques such as machine learning and natural language processing, and identifies the optimal infrastructure and networks (i.e., with academic partners) necessary to build capacity and expertise.
- Maintain comprehensive documentation of all work, including code, methodologies, and key learnings, to support transparency and knowledge sharing.
- Support the development and maintenance of version control protocols and contribute to the promotion of data science best practices.
- Liaise with members of the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health on key deliverables for data science initiatives.
- Monitor, evaluate and enhance data science models to keep up to date with evolving techniques and cutting-edge approaches.
- Stay current with, collaborate with, and provide technical input on behalf of PHO into data science/AI activities of Ontario ministries, Public Health Agency of Canada, and other relevant groups, and links and applies knowledge and information back to relevant program areas.
- Remains informed of emerging trends, innovations, and novel developments in data science and artificial intelligence. Establish and maintain a network of external partners at research institutes and post-secondary institutions to support knowledge exchange and innovation.
- Foster strong, collaborative partnerships with internal and external clients, representing PHO’s data science capabilities in various settings.
- Other duties as assigned.

**Knowledge and Skills-**
- Proven ability to translate complex data into tools and actionable recommendations for clients/partners.
- Skills in collaborating on projects which involve the integration of data science methods and concepts into policy briefs, scientific papers and reports, for communication with stakeholders.
- Skills and expertise in working in providing consultative advice within a multi-disciplinary work environment.
- Skills in developing data pipelines to prepare large datasets for use.
- Knowledge and expertise related to the utilization of data science and analytics software packages (e.g., R, Python, SQL).
- Knowledge of modelling, Machine Learning AI concepts, methods, and toolkits (Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Large Language Models (LLMs)).
- Expertise in machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Scikit-learn.
- Understanding of deep learning techniques and NLP models such as transformers (BERT, GPT, etc.).
- Quality assurance skills including the ability to document and test to ensure code reproducibility and reusability.

**Education and Experience-**
- Master’s degree in data science/AI, computer science, machine learning, applied mathematics program combined with at least 5 years of experience in data science, AI, machine learning, or advanced analytics.
- Expertise in mathematical modelling, simulation and forecasting is preferred.
- Proven experience in NLP, including developing models for text data.
- Experienced with LLMs (extractive and generative), fine-tuning and LLM model development. Familiar with higher level trends in LLMs and open-source platforms.
- Experience and interest in working with Azure Machine Learning Studio, Azure Data Lake, and other Azure services.
- Hands-on experience with Azure Machine Learning, Databricks or similar cloud platforms for building and deploying machine learning models.
- Experience developing large, complex analytic models.
- Experience with Azure and Python NLP libraries such as SpaCy, Hugging Face, NLTK or similar.
- Experience and interest in working with DataBricks as a cloud p