Junior Data Scientist

DISCOVERY VITALITY  ·  VITALITY ACTUARIAL & DATA SCIENCE

Junior Data Scientist

Data Science Specialist  ·  Johannesburg

You won't be fetching coffee or cleaning data for someone else's model. You'll build your own. Read on.

You're a member of Vitality Actuarial and Data Science (VADS), building intelligent products that change how members experience Vitality and producing insights that change the business. You'll work where behavioural science, health data, financial services and applied AI meet. With support from a Senior Data Scientist, you'll take products from raw idea to something live in members' hands and insights from interesting to impactful.

This is a hands-on build role. You'll own real problems, not side projects. You go looking for questions, you prototype fast, you ship, and you learn out loud. The senior team has your back, but the drive and curiosity are on you.

Building & Shipping Intelligent Products

• Own products and insights end-to-end, with senior support  from problem framing to production deployment on GCP (Vertex AI, BigQuery) and/or Azure Databricks. You take real responsibility for your work, not just pieces of it.
• Build and deploy ML models that drive personalisation, engagement and smarter recommendations for millions of Vitality members.
• Write clean, production-minded code you care about how your model behaves after launch, not just whether it runs in a notebook.

Getting Value from Data

• Ask good questions of the data. Go looking for patterns, gaps and use cases rather than waiting for a brief.
• Get to know the data estate . Learn what we have, what's underused, and where the interesting problems hide.
• Prototype fast and learn fast. Be honest about what's working and what isn't; and always frame the "so what."

Staying Curious About AI

• Keep up with AI, ML and LLMs and bring new tools and ideas to the team, not just links.
• Experiment with new techniques and share what you learn.
• Learn from the senior team. Soak up modelling and engineering discipline, and ask the questions that make you better.

Working With the Team

• Collaborate across the team, with engineers, actuaries and fellow data scientists to build things that last.
• Explain your work clearly to non-technical colleagues, and present confidently to the team.
• Contribute to team knowledge and document what you build so others can build on it.

Core Skills to Build

• Applied ML and LLM basics — model development, evaluation, fine-tuning and productionisation.
• Production discipline — clean code, version control, monitoring, and understanding what happens after deployment.
• Cloud-native data science — GCP (Vertex AI, BigQuery) and/or Azure Databricks.
• Clear communication — explaining technical work simply to non-technical colleagues.
• Behavioural science curiosity — enough to understand how products change what members do.

Who You Are

• 2–4 years in data science, ML or a related quantitative field.
• A quantitative background (actuarial, stats, CS, data science, maths, physics or similar) — self-taught with a strong portfolio is just as welcome. Formal postgrad qualifications aren't required.
• Solid Python and SQL, you can already build and query, not just talk about it.
• Some exposure to taking models beyond a notebook - you're keen to learn proper production and MLOps discipline.
• Genuine curiosity about behavioural science, health, wellness or insurance; not just the tech.

The Mindset That Matters Most

Six months in, you're shipping real work that members actually use. A year in, you're owning products with confidence, the senior team trusts your judgement, and you've grown from someone who executes into someone who spots the opportunities. You've become the person others come to with questions — because you're always the one asking the best ones.

Discovery's core purpose is to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives. Vitality is the engine of that purpose. You'll join a team at the strategic heart of the business, with rich datasets, genuinely interesting problems, brilliant people to learn from, and a mandate to build.

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.