Director, Search & AI Evaluation

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term strategy for search relevance, retrieval evaluation, ranking optimization, and AI system quality.
• Lead initiatives focused on semantic retrieval, vector search, RAG, and hallucination mitigation.
• Establish scalable evaluation methodologies for search, recommendation, and LLM-powered systems, including IR metrics and human annotation strategies.
• Operationalize evaluation frameworks for generative AI, focusing on grounding, faithfulness, and online experimentation.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of Senior Data Scientists and Data Analysts.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and UX Research leadership to align AI investments with business priorities.

Requirements

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, or a related quantitative field.
• Significant experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, or Information Retrieval.
• Proven experience leading and scaling high-performing technical teams in complex organizations.
• Deep expertise in search relevance, ranking systems, and semantic search.
• Expertise in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and LLM evaluation methodologies.
• Advanced Python programming skills.
• Experience with modern AI/ML frameworks such as PyTorch or Hugging Face.
• Strong understanding of statistical analysis, experimentation design, and A/B testing.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building evaluation systems for LLM-powered applications and AI assistants.
• Familiarity with scientific, biomedical, or scholarly datasets and workflows.
• Experience with knowledge graphs, ontologies, or semantic enrichment systems.
• Exposure to production ML systems, MLOps, and AI governance practices.
• Publications or applied research contributions in NLP, IR, or generative AI.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Pension Plan.
• Home, office, or commuting allowance.
• Generous vacation entitlement and option for sabbatical leave.
• Flexible working hours and wellbeing initiatives.
• Maternity, Paternity, Adoption, and Family Care leave.

About the Company

Elsevier is a global leader in information and analytics, helping researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes. By combining high-quality content with powerful analytics, we transform complexity into clarity to support visionary science, research, and clinical practice.