Senior Data Scientist

Position: Senior Data Scientist

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Type: Full-time

Reporting to: Head of Data

About SunCulture 

SunCulture is a leading agriculture and climate technology company. SunCulture helps smallholder farmers grow more food with climate technology, carbon financing, and a digital marketplace, and is the largest solar irrigation company in Africa. The company was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer, and has been named as one of the World's Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. Our CEO was also just named to the TIME100 Climate list. To learn more about the company, see this TED Talk one of our customers did, this explainer video recently made by CNBC, or listen to this podcast our CEO recently did. 

About the Role

The Senior Data Scientist is a visionary leader driving AI and data science innovation at SunCulture, championing the development of an AI-led self-service data platform to transform how teams access and leverage data. With a mastery of machine learning, generative AI, and data science methodologies, this role delivers immediate business value through cutting-edge solutions. Fueled by curiosity, innovation, and a strong sense of ownership, the Senior Data Scientist proactively identifies opportunities, leads proof-of-concept (POC) initiatives to test hypotheses, and collaborates with the Head of Data to unlock transformative efficiencies across operations in Kenya, Uganda, and Côte d'Ivoire. This role owns critical ML models like Credit Scoring, ensures ethical AI practices, and drives predictive analytics to enhance revenue, credit decisions, collections, and marketing.

Key Responsibilities

• AI and Data Science Leadership: Own the end-to-end lifecycle of AI/ML projects, from ideation and business scoping to prototyping, model packaging (e.g., via Docker), and deployment with DevOps, ensuring seamless integration into production environments.

• Predictive Analytics and Model Ownership: Own and enhance critical ML models, such as the Credit Scoring model, by continuously monitoring performance, ensuring high accuracy, and implementing improvements to boost predictive power and reliability. Develop data-driven predictive models to unlock revenue growth, enable smarter credit decisions, strengthen collections, and optimize marketing strategies, addressing business challenges and driving operational efficiency through innovative automation.

• Champion AI-Led Self-Service Data Platform: Spearhead the development and adoption of an AI-driven self-service data platform, leveraging generative AI, AI agents, and LLMs to automate tasks, streamline workflows, and empower teams to access insights independently.

• Drive Innovation through POCs: Proactively design and execute POCs using AI to test hypotheses, validate business use cases, and develop new models to address user needs or simplify processes through automation, collaborating with the Head of Data to align with strategic goals.

• Business Process Optimization: Partner with business teams (via the Data Business Partner) to identify repetitive, decision-heavy, or complex tasks, applying predictive models or AI-driven automation to optimize processes and deliver measurable value.

• MLOps and AI Governance: Collaborate with Data Engineers and DevOps to build robust ML pipelines, ensuring model monitoring, versioning, and reliability. Maintain AI fairness, performance, and compliance, particularly for region-specific use cases like credit scoring or customer segmentation, adhering to local regulations (e.g., Kenya’s Data Protection Act).

• Cross-Functional Collaboration

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