Data Science Manager (CXD)

About the role

Rakuten Asia Pte. Ltd., the regional headquarters for Asia, is looking for a Data Science Manager to lead the applied AI science function within its CXD team. You will manage a team of data scientists and ML engineers responsible for the intelligence layer of the conversational AI platform, setting technical direction, building team capability and improving model quality, retrieval performance and personalisation. The role works closely with product and engineering partners in Singapore and Japan.

Key responsibilities

• Build, manage and mentor a team of data scientists and ML engineers, define the technical roadmap and set the scientific bar for the group-wide Customer Service AI platform
• Own the end-to-end lifecycle of large language models in production, including vendor evaluation, fine-tuning and version upgrades, and give scientific sign-off on orchestration strategies and routing policies
• Lead research and improvement of Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems, including retrieval quality, reranking, knowledge base health and generation faithfulness
• Define a multi-layer evaluation framework (offline benchmarks, online A/B tests, production monitoring) and pre-launch evaluation gates for each Business Unit
• Own the team's Voice of Customer analysis, including error taxonomies and active learning pipelines
• Set the technical direction for conversational memory, context and user profile management, and work with engineering to make it scalable
• Partner with Product and Business stakeholders to deliver personalisation for upsell and conversion, measuring it against conversion and revenue outcomes

Required profile

• 7+ years in applied machine learning or NLP, including 3+ years in a people management or technical lead role
• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, NLP or a related field strongly preferred; equivalent research-level industry experience considered
• Deep hands-on experience with LLMs and RAG systems in production
• Ability to provide mathematical and algorithmic sign-off on system design decisions
• Experience with agentic reasoning evaluation, online experiments (A/B, bandits) and evaluation frameworks
• Experience building and developing high-performing data science teams
• Comfortable working in a cross-regional environment with stakeholders in Japan

Required skills

• Python and cloud ML infrastructure (GCP preferred)
• Familiarity with vector search and embedding models
• Strong communication skills with technical and non-technical stakeholders