Lead Data Scientist - GenAI

Norfolk Southern Corp. • Atlanta, GA

3d • Hybrid

About The Position

Norfolk Southern Corporation is seeking a Lead Data Scientist (GenAI) to join our enterprise AI team. This role focuses on developing, optimizing, and enhancing intelligent solutions using Generative AI technologies, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. The ideal candidate will partner with technical and business leaders across the enterprise to deliver scalable, secure, and high-performing AI capabilities that drive business value. The position involves working with cloud-based platforms, modern AI/ML frameworks, and collaborating across business units to solve complex problems.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in GenAI, Data Science, Machine Learning, or NLP positions.
• Extensive background in building, finetuning and operationalizing large language models (LLMs) in production environment.
• Proficiency in Python, including libraries such as Scikit-learn, PyTorch, Pandas, NumPy, spaCy, NLTK, and Matplotlib.
• Skilled in SQL, NoSQL, Milvus, Pinecone, PGVector databases

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree, e.g., Ph.D. or M.S. computer science, data science, machine learning, NLP, AI, linguistics, or related field preferred.
• Highly experienced in creating Agentic LLMs and knowledge of orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph.
• NLP and AI/ML Frameworks: Experience with training NLP models from scratch, working with Large Language Models, and using libraries such as Pytorch, and Transformers.
• Highly experienced with cloud platforms, preferably AWS (ECS, S3, Lambda, Bedrock, OpenSearch), Databricks, and Datadog.
• DevOps knowledge: Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Git, Terraform.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and architecture of enterprise GenAI solutions tailored to business use cases.
• Design modular, framework‑agnostic LLM pipelines using libraries such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar
• Define prompting strategies, agent patterns, and RAG architectures. Ensure approaches are scalable, reusable company‑wide and drive adoption across teams.
• Oversee lifecycle of usecases, development to deployment to production and MLops.
• Ensure responsible AI practices, including explain ability, governance, and compliance.
• Evaluate emerging AI trends and help guide the adoption of high value innovations.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand business needs and deliver configurable, scalable solutions.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior