Associate Director of Data Science (MLOps)

Location: Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom; hybrid working with predominantly remote options, but applicants must be based or willing to relocate within a comfortable commuting distance of the office for onsite attendance.

Company

hirify.global is a game development company creating community-powered online worlds, including the RuneScape MMORPG franchise.

What you will do

• Lead the data science team by setting direction, managing workload, and supporting professional development.
• Build and own data science, predictive modelling, and machine learning models for commercial, product, and player-facing use cases.
• Lead the exploration and delivery of new data science initiatives from ideation through production and adoption.
• Own MLOps practices covering model deployment, monitoring, versioning, and retraining pipelines in collaboration with Data Engineering.
• Partner with Player Support, Marketing, Analytics, and Game Teams as the day-to-day data science contact.
• Coach data scientists on technical delivery, stakeholder management, and communication with senior non-technical audiences.

Requirements

• Significant experience applying data science to complex commercial, product, or player-facing problems.
• Strong practical knowledge of statistical methods, predictive modelling, machine learning, and model performance evaluation.
• Hands-on production MLOps experience, including deployment, monitoring, versioning, and retraining.
• Experience leading or mentoring data scientists, including coaching and workload management.
• Track record of taking analytical or modelling work from exploration through to live, adopted use.
• Strong stakeholder management, written communication, and verbal communication skills, including translating technical work into plain language.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible working hours and predominantly remote hybrid working with required onsite attendance.
• Private healthcare, including a dental plan.
• Minimum 6% pension contributions and life insurance.
• Employee Assistance Programme and onsite counselling.
• Discretionary annual performance bonus and enhanced family leave from day one.
• 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to buy or sell holidays.