Director, Search & AI Evaluation (AI)

TL;DR

Director, Search & AI Evaluation (AI): Leading a data science organization to build intelligent retrieval, ranking, and evaluation systems for scientific and healthcare discovery with an accent on search relevance, RAG, and LLM evaluation. Focus on defining scalable evaluation frameworks, mitigating AI hallucinations, and driving evidence-based decision-making for next-generation AI platforms.

Location: London or Amsterdam (Hybrid)

Company

A global leader in information and analytics helping researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes.

What you will do

• Define and drive the long-term strategy for search relevance, retrieval evaluation, ranking optimization, and AI system quality.
• Lead initiatives to improve semantic retrieval, vector search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and AI grounding.
• Operationalize evaluation frameworks including IR metrics (NDCG, recall, precision) and LLM/RAG methodologies.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of Senior Data Scientists and Data Analysts.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and UX Research to align search and AI investments with business priorities.
• Champion responsible AI practices focused on reliability, trust, and measurable user impact.

Requirements

• Must be based in or able to work from London or Amsterdam
• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, ML, Information Retrieval, NLP, or a related quantitative field.
• 10+ years of experience in Data Science, IR, Search Relevance, Evaluation Systems, or Applied AI.
• Significant experience leading and scaling high-performing technical teams in complex organizations.
• Deep expertise in RAG, vector retrieval, hybrid search architectures, and AI quality measurement.
• Advanced programming skills in Python and experience with PyTorch, Hugging Face, LangChain, or Haystack.

Nice to have

• PhD in Computer Science, ML, NLP, or Statistics.
• Experience with scientific, biomedical, or scholarly datasets and workflows.
• Familiarity with knowledge graphs, ontologies, or semantic enrichment systems.
• Publications or applied research contributions in NLP, IR, or generative AI.
• Experience building AI systems in high-trust or regulated domains.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible working hours to support a healthy work-life balance.
• Comprehensive Pension Plan and home, office, or commuting allowance.
• Generous vacation entitlement and options for sabbatical leave.
• Maternity, Paternity, Adoption, and Family Care leave.
• Personal Choice budget and a global Employee Assistance Program.