Senior Python Developer

Discovery Health

Senior Python Developer – LLMs

 

About Discovery 

Discovery’s core purpose is to enhance and protect people’s lives. It does this through breakthrough product designs that harness incentives to encourage people to make healthier lifestyle choices. Healthy behaviour leads to lower claims, higher margins, and lower lapses. These savings are shared with our clients which in turn leads to a healthier society, improved productivity, and a reduced healthcare burden. One of Discovery’s core assets is its large and diverse data, covering health, wellness, driving, investments, and life insurance. This forms the basis for our shared value model, along with innovation, risk management and operational efficiency improvements. Discovery’s energetic and motivated analytical teams make this happen.  

 

About the Data Science Lab

The Data Science Lab applies predictive analytics, machine learning, big data, and operations research skills to run and to support key projects for the Discovery Group and for the individual Discovery business units, including the health, life, and short-term insurance businesses. We work across operational, clinical, wellness, financial, customer service, sales, and behavioural science areas. We use and create state-of-the-art tools and work with terabytes of structured and unstructured data.

 

About the Position

The key purpose of this role is to be a senior Python specialist in a Data Science team which is researching, developing, and implementing Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Large Language Model (LLM) systems. This includes building systems from prototype through to production, evaluating their effectiveness, and developing and maintaining data pipelines and integrations. The role requires close collaboration with data scientists, developers, system architects, and operations teams, working with significant stakeholder engagement and interest throughout the process.

 

Responsibilities include

• Work within a specialised team of data scientists and developers to deliver, maintain, and expand machine learning, NLP, and LLM systems which are built primarily in Python.
• Develop and implement reusable data pipelines for structured, unstructured, text, and document data.
• Build reusable ML and LLM components, micro-services, and data solutions.
• Ensure all pipelines and components maintain compliance with privacy, security, compliance, and data quality standards, working with architects to take responsibility for ensuring that our team’s projects meet these standards.
• Stay updated on the latest technologies and software to ensure fit-for-purpose solutions.
• Collaborate with system architects, data scientists, and business stakeholders in operations and healthcare contexts.
• Define and implement strategies for post-production model monitoring in collaboration with data scientists.
• Document code, lead code reviews, and provide progress updates.
• Coach others in the team to teach and improve coding best practices.

 

Personal Attributes and Technical Skills

• Expert in Python
• Experience with SQL
• Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Experience building and hosting microservices
• Experience working with diverse teams to understand data sources and build integrations
• DevOps/DataOps and CI/CD skills
• Advantageous: experience designing table structures and schemas
• Advantageous: skills in Java, Scala, or R
• Advantageous: experience working with unstructured text and document data (HTML, PDF etc.) and related pipelines to store and query this data
• Advantageous : experience with Azure or GCP
• Excellent planning, organizational, scoping, and time management skills
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Strong analytical, critical, conceptual thinking, and problem-solving skills
• Self-motivated and proactive, with a strong ability to identify and tackle challenges independently, demonstrating a keen entrepreneurial spirit.
• Resilient and optimistic

 

Education and Experience

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Software Engineering, or similar, or equivalent experience.
• 5-10 years’ work experience as a Developer or Data Engineer, with a Python focus.

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY   
                             
The Company’s approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.