Lead Data Scientist (GenAI)

Norfolk Southern Corp. • Atlanta, GA

30d • 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. The problems solved include Document Intelligence (analyzing and extracting insights from corporate documents, reports, and operational data using advanced NLP techniques), Conversational AI (building intelligent chat systems to help employees retrieve information and interact with enterprise data), GenAI Solutions (creating and deploying Generative AI models for document processing, visual data analysis, and natural language understanding), and Model Context Protocol (MCP) (enhancing AI agent capabilities through custom tool integrations and context-aware servers).

Requirements

• Bachelor’s in computer science, data science, machine learning, NLP, AI, linguistics, or related field required.
• 4-7+ years of experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, NLP or AI 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 spaCy, NLTK, 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 explainability, 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