Sr Data Scientist- Conversational AI & NLU

Citizens Financial Group•Westwood, MA

14h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Data Scientist – Conversational AI & NLU is responsible for designing, developing, evaluating, and optimizing conversational AI solutions across chat and voice channels. This role focuses on GenAI-driven conversational experiences, agentic multi‑turn conversations, and rigorous evaluation of NLU and LLM-based systems, while serving as a primary interface between business stakeholders and data science delivery teams.

Requirements

Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, or a related quantitative field
5+ years of experience in data science, with at least 3+ years focused on conversational AI, NLU, or NLP-driven systems
Strong programming and analytical skills in Python, applied primarily to modeling, experimentation, and evaluation
Hands-on experience with LLM Evaluation frameworks like RAGAS, DeepEval, LangSmith, etc.
Proven ability to design, run, interpret, and communicate the results of NLU and conversational AI experiments, translating insights into concrete model and conversation improvements
Experience supporting text- and voice-based, multi-turn, actionable conversational experiences within contact center or customer-facing platforms
Strong communication skills with demonstrated ability to explain complex analytical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with Amazon Connect, Amazon Bedrock, or Amazon Lex
Practical experience applying LLMs and GenAI techniques to conversational or customer experience use cases
Familiarity with IVR analytics, conversational logging frameworks, call transcripts, and speech-to-text data analysis
Experience working in banking, financial services, or other regulated enterprise environments

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and optimize GenAI-powered conversational AI solutions using advanced prompting strategies, structured evaluation frameworks, continuous monitoring, and solution performance reporting
Build and improve agentic, multi-turn conversational experiences with robust context management, memory strategies, and conversation state handling
Own experimentation and evaluation of NLU, LLM, and conversational AI solutions, including hypothesis definition, metric design, error analysis, and recommendation of targeted improvements
Act as the primary data science partner to business stakeholders by gathering requirements, clarifying objectives, translating needs into actionable analytical and modeling tasks, and driving execution to measurable outcomes
Assign, coordinate, review, and provide technical guidance on work delivered by onshore and offshore data scientists, ensuring analytical rigor, consistency, and timely delivery
Support end-to-end delivery of conversational AI and NLU capabilities for IVR and chat solutions, including intent understanding, entity extraction, dialogue flows, and conversational quality assessment
Analyze conversation data such as chat logs, call transcripts, and speech-to-text outputs to identify gaps, failure modes, and optimization opportunities across user journeys
Define and report solution-level KPIs related to conversation success, containment, task completion, accuracy, customer effort, and overall experience quality
Ensure conversational AI solutions align with enterprise standards, governance, and regulatory expectations, particularly in highly regulated environments