Level Up Your Career!
At Kwalee, you’ll join a gaming powerhouse that boasts a mobile empire with 1.5 billion+ downloads alongside a thriving PC & Console division that has achieved numerous global chart-topping releases across Steam, Consoles, and Amazon, driving millions of Wishlists. Most recently publishing breakout hits such as The Precinct and Town to City. It’s a unique chance to bring your expertise to a global studio that dominates both the mobile, and the indie PC and Console space.
At Kwalee, as well as a competitive salary we also offer; Private Medical Insurance, Dental Insurance, Life Assurance, Royal London Pension, a Free On-site Gym, Dog-friendly Office, LinkedIn Learning, 25 holiday days + bank holidays, and 1 day extra holiday for each year of service capped at 5.
Kwalee are seeking a highly talented Principal Data Scientist to set the data science and ML strategy in partnership with the Director of AI and Technology.
They will also lead high-impact modelling, experimentation, and productionised ML to understand player behaviour and market trends. Alongside this the Principal Data Scientist will mentor and grow data scientists and graduates, and bridge business stakeholders and technical delivery.
Responsibilities:
Strategic Direction & Roadmap
Define the data science and ML roadmap in partnership with the Director of AI and Technology and wider tech leadership.
Prioritise the team's model and experiment backlog by measurable business value.
Translate ambiguous commercial problems into hypotheses, experiments, and ML products.
Modelling, Experimentation & Delivery
Design, train, evaluate, and productionise ML models across the relevant techniques (classification, regression, recommenders, LTV, uplift, sequence models, embeddings).
Lead A/B automation testing and causal inference work; own statistical rigour and readouts.
Ensure models are explainable, monitored, retrained on a defined cadence, and have clear ownership.
Leadership & Talent Development
Line-manage data scientists and graduate data scientists; set goals, conduct 1:1s, support career growth.
Set the technical bar through code review, model review, and architecture review.
Create a learning culture: paper reading, experiment write-ups, internal tech talks, Kaggle / open-source participation.
Stakeholder Partnership & Communication
Act as the principal data science point of contact for Studio, UA, Growth, and Finance leaders.
Communicate results clearly to non-technical leaders; drive decisions, not just decks.
Contribute the data science view into SLT and board-level reporting where required.
Governance, Ethics & Risk
Ensure data science work complies with privacy, security, and platform policy (GDPR, COPPA where relevant, store policy).
Document model risk, bias considerations, and mitigation steps for any customer-facing model.
Operate within agreed cost guardrails for compute, storage, and third-party APIs.
Ad-hoc other tasks which may arise from time to time and be assigned to you by your line manager.
Requirements:
Degree in Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, Chemistry, Engineering or a related quantitative disciplines. MSc or PhD is a plus.
5+ years applied data science / ML, including 2+ years tech-leading or line-managing.
Demonstrable track record of ML models in production delivering measurable business outcomes.
Games, mobile, or consumer-tech experience preferred but not required.
Expertise in Python and SQL, Cloud & Data Platforms and Data Visualisation.
Experience in technical leadership and mentoring team members.
Excellent communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.
