Applied AI Data Scientist

Location: Manchester or London (Hybrid)

Help build AI that protects the world's most valuable content. Every weekend, millions of people watch live sport.

Some watch legally. Many don't. Friend MTS helps the world's leading broadcasters, sports organisations and streaming platforms understand, detect and disrupt digital piracy at internet scale. We're investing heavily in AI to solve problems that traditional software can't. If you're excited about applying AI to messy, real-world data - not Kaggle competitions - we'd like to talk.

The opportunity

As an Applied AI Data Scientist, you'll work on some of the most challenging data problems in the media and cyber security industries. You'll help build AI-powered products that analyse streaming, network and behavioural data to uncover organised piracy, identify abnormal activity and provide actionable intelligence to our customers. This isn't a research role. It's about applying AI to solve real customer problems. You'll work alongside software engineers, intelligence analysts and product managers to build production systems used by customers around the world.

What you'll build

You'll help develop intelligent systems that can

• Detect organised piracy activity
• Identify abnormal behavioural patterns
• Analyse large-scale streaming and network data
• Automate investigations using LLMs and AI agents
• Discover hidden relationships across billions of events
• Turn complex data into products customers rely on every day

Some projects will last weeks. Others will become core parts of our platform.

What you'll do

You'll be involved across the full AI lifecycle, including

• Exploring and understanding complex datasets
• Designing and training machine learning models
• Building AI-powered applications
• Writing clean, maintainable Python code
• Working closely with Engineering to deploy production systems
• Collaborating with Product and Operational Intelligence teams
• Experimenting with new AI techniques and technologies

What we're looking for

We're more interested in how you think than whether you've used every technology we use. We're looking for people who enjoy solving difficult technical problems, learn quickly and care about building high-quality software.

You'll bring experience in

• Python
• SQL
• Machine Learning
• Cloud platforms such as AWS
• Working with large datasets
• Production software development

Experience with any of the following is useful, but not essential:

• LLMs
• AI Agents
• PyTorch
• XGBoost
• Graph analytics
• Behavioural modelling
• Cyber security
• Network analytics

If you're curious, we'll help you learn.

Our technology

Our technology stack continues to evolve, but you'll typically work with:

• Python
• SQL
• AWS
• PyTorch
• Scikit-learn
• XGBoost
• Docker
• GitHub
• Claude Code
• GitHub Copilot
• LLMs
• AI Agents

Why Friend MTS?

You'll work on problems very few engineers ever encounter. Internet-scale systems. Adversarial behaviour.

Real-time intelligence. Applied AI. You'll help build technology that protects some of the world's largest broadcasters, sports organisations and streaming platforms while learning from a highly experienced engineering team.

If solving difficult technical problems excites you, we'd love to hear from you.

What We Offer

• 25 days of annual leave (Incl. Bank Holidays) + 1 day off for your birthday
• Enhanced Pension - 5% employee and 5% employer contribution
• Life Assurance - on the successful completion of your probation (4x your salary)
• BUPA (on the successful completion of your probation)
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Enhanced Maternity, Paternity and Adoption Leave (after a qualifying period)
• Various Learning and Development Platforms
• A flexible Benefits and Wellbeing Platform
• Full tech set up to ensure you have what you need to be successful in your role
• Weekly breakfasts in the office
• Mentorship: Direct access to senior data scientists and engineers in a supportive, high-growth environment.
• Impact: The chance to work on technology that protects some of the most valuable media rights in the world.
• Growth: A clear career progression path within a private-equity-backed, global tech company.

*Here at Friend MTS, we are dedicated to nurturing and expanding a culture of belonging where everyone feels seen, heard, valued for who they are. By embracing the diversity of our people (and future people!) we achieve our best work, together. We ensure that at all stages of our hiring process, your education level, neurodivergence, background, race, religion, colour, sex, age, sexual orientation, national origin, or disability will not influence your chances for selection.*

*If you are interested in applying for a role at Friend MTS and need special assistance, please make us aware and we will support you in accommodating this.*