Senior Lead Data Scientist

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our exciting team of employees. Royal Caribbean Group is pleased to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

Position Summary:

We are seeking a Senior Lead Data Scientist to lead cross-functional AI/ML initiatives and bridge tactical execution and medium‑term strategy. The position demands an inquisitive individual who can work both independently and alongside other data analytics professionals, both internal and external to Royal Caribbean, to support the development of AI/ML business assets and provide regular analytics updates with senior stakeholders. This position requires high technical competency in AI modeling, including PySpark + ML models, as well as strong written & oral communication skills. The ideal candidate combines expert-level modeling and software engineering skills with strong stakeholder management and program leadership.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Lead end-to-end delivery for a portfolio of AI/ML and generative AI projects — from discovery, problem framing and data strategy through feature engineering, modeling, deployment, monitoring, and business adoption; be hands‑on when required to deliver production‑ready solutions.
• Develop, own and adapt a 1–2 year roadmap; prioritize projects by expected business impact, feasibility, cost and timing; author business cases and secure stakeholder buy‑in.
• Own measurable business outcomes for assigned programs (critical KPIs) and drive ROI through experimentation and measurement strategies (A/B tests, uplift analysis, etc.).
• Oversee, organize, coach and mentor a team of data scientists, ML engineers and technical leads; enforce engineering best practices (code reviews, testing, documentation, reproducibility).
• Provide technical leadership and project management; act as primary strategy contact and escalation point for stakeholders up to executive level; manage change, urgent requests and deliver within agile programs.
• Perform hands‑on development of complex analytic systems, predictive and optimization models, custom algorithms and large‑scale data analyses to uncover insights and drive business value.
• Design, implement and continuously improve robust MLOps and production pipelines: CI/CD, model/feature/versioning/lineage, deployment/rollback, monitoring/alerting, retraining pipelines and SLA management.
• Ensure ongoing technical and cost performance of production models — drift detection, monitoring, retraining triggers, compute/cost optimization and SLA enforcement.
• Lead architecture, tooling and platform decisions for the data science stack; evaluate build vs. buy tradeoffs, assess vendors/partners and recommend open‑source or commercial solutions.
• Partner cross‑functionally (Product, Engineering, Data Engineering, Operations, Commercial) to operationalize models, integrate with core systems and measure/validate business impact.
• Drive ideation and discovery for new analytics and AI products/features; prototype PoCs, iterate with stakeholders and shepherd prioritized initiatives into production.
• Translate technical results into clear business recommendations and ROI; present tradeoffs, risks and outcomes to both technical and non‑technical audiences, including senior executives.
• Leverage advanced ML techniques (statistical modeling, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, recommendation systems, optimization, large‑scale data mining) to solve business problems.
• Lead generative AI initiatives: design, fine‑tune and deploy LLMs and other generative models; build prompt engineering practices, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), embedding pipelines and vector DB integrations.
• Establish governance, safety and risk controls for generative and other AI: content moderation, hallucination mitigation, bias/fairness testing, privacy/PII safeguards, legal/compliance review and human‑in‑the‑loop processes.
• Define evaluation frameworks and KPIs for generative and predictive models (quality, relevance, safety, bias, latency, cost); implement continuous testing, validation and experiment‑driven improvements.
• Incorporate generative AI-specific practices into MLOps: prompt/version control, fine‑tuning pipelines, inference scaling (latency/throughput), cost/performance optimization, monitoring for unsafe outputs and rollback strategies.
• Evangelize AI capabilities across the organization: produce playbooks, train stakeholders, publish standards and foster collaboration in a matrixed environment.
• Ensure projects comply with company policies and external regulations — incorporate data governance, security, IP and privacy considerations and support legal/compliance reviews as needed.

Qualifications, Knowledge & Skills:

• Master’s degree in relevant field. Ph.D. strongly preferred.
• Minimum of 7+ years working on projects relating to Data Analytics, Machine-Learning, and AI.
• Minimum of 3+ years leading enterprise-focused analytics/AI teams and / or projects.
• Minimum of 3+ years of software engineering experience and must know Python.
• Experience developing and implementing projects that link to core business such as ERP, MRP, BI, CRM, AM.
• Excellent interpersonal skills to communicate with all levels of management.
• Experience leading / creating advanced AI models and solutions.
• Experience with Deep Learning tools and packages (e.g. TensorFlow, Keras).
• Experience with frameworks and languages designed for big-data analysis (e.g. Pyspark, Dask, or Polars).
• Experience with cloud computing frameworks or APIs such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services.
• Strong background in one or more of the following: Mathematical, Statistics, Probability, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Recommendation Systems, Pattern Recognition, Large Scale Data Mining or Artificial Intelligence.
• Demonstrates a strong capacity for learning and assimilating new techniques, tools, and methods.
• Must be highly motivated as this position will require significant focus and energy to influence change as he/she will work with other leaders to transform and help RCG continue to innovate in a sustainable and profitable manner. 
• Lead the development of advanced composite and pipelined models· Strong ability to collaborate in matrix organization and make the whole better than the sum of the parts.
• Leadership skills, including coaching, teambuilding, conflict resolution, and management.

• Comfortable delivering within an agile program.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS:

The physical demands described here are representative of those requirements employees must meet to perform the essential functions of this job with or without reasonable accommodations. While performing job functions the employee is regularly required to sit, and stand, write, review and type reports, compile data, operate a PC, communicate, listen, and assess information. The employee may move about the office complex, may travel to other office locations, and may lift, push, pull, or move 10-15 pounds. The employee is occasionally required to walk to the dock, ascend, and descend the vessel. This position may regularly travel domestically or internationally. Visual requirements include distant, close, and color vision, and the ability to adjust focus.

WORK ENVIRONMENT:

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of the job. The environment includes working inside/outside the office, traveling to other offices, possibly traveling domestically and internationally, and working in shipboard functions. A high noise level is possible if visiting shipboard or offsite locations.

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. We'll hope to see you onboard soon!

It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.

All applicants who receive a conditional offer of employment will be required to comply with the Company’s mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination Policy. The Company’s COVID-19 Vaccination Policy requires all employees who work from the Company’s offices or whose job duties require them to travel to our U.S. offices, ships, and/or private destinations be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. If you are covered by this policy, you will be asked to complete Vaccination Attestation upon acceptance of this offer and upload proof of vaccination to the Company’s human resources system on your first day of employment unless an accommodation has been granted.