Sr Data Scientist- Conversational AI & NLU

Location: Westwood, MA, United States, Columbus, Ohio, United States, Iselin, New Jersey, United States, Phoenix, Arizona, United States, Johnston, Rhode Island, United States

Employment Type: 1ST

Description

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.

Key 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

Required Qualifications

• 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

Preferred Qualifications

• 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

Hours & Work Schedule

• Hours per Week: 40
• Work Schedule: Monday - Friday
• Hybrid: 4 days per week onsite, 1 day remote

Pay Transparency

The salary range for this position is $124,000 - $165,000 per year, plus an opportunity to earn an annual discretionary bonus. Actual pay is based on various factors including but not limited to the work location, and relevant skills and experience.

We offer competitive pay, comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, maternity/paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, education reimbursement, wellness programs and more. Note, Citizens’ paid time off policy exceeds the mandatory, paid sick or paid time-away policy of every local and state jurisdiction in the United States. For an overview of our benefits, visit https://jobs.citizensbank.com/benefits .

Some job boards have started using jobseeker-reported data to estimate salary ranges for roles. If you apply and qualify for this role, a recruiter will discuss accurate pay guidance.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Citizens, its parent, subsidiaries, and related companies (Citizens) provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all colleagues and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, citizenship, physical or mental disability, perceived disability or history or record of a disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, genetic characteristic, marital or domestic partner status, victim of domestic violence, family status/parenthood, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, pregnancy/childbirth/lactation, colleague’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state and/or local laws. At Citizens, we are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that enables all colleagues to bring their best selves to work every day and everyone is expected to be treated with respect and professionalism. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, performance and capability.