Principal Specialist Data Science & Artificial Intelligence

About Ma'aden and the Role

Ma'aden, established in 1997, is recognized as one of the fastest-growing mining companies globally and the largest multi-commodity mining and metals company in the Middle East. The company is instrumental in developing the mining industry to become the third pillar of Saudi Arabia’s economy by building a world-class, integrated mining value chain. This full-time role for a Principal Specialist, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, based in Riyadh, leads advanced data science and analytics initiatives within the Agentic AI department.

Role Purpose and Contribution

The Principal Specialist translates business problems into scalable analytical solutions, AI-enabled insights, predictive models, and decision intelligence products. This position contributes to building enterprise capabilities that leverage trusted data, machine learning, automation, and agentic AI concepts to enhance productivity, operational performance, and business decision-making across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the translation of business priorities, operational challenges, and use cases into clear data science problem statements, analytical approaches, and measurable outcomes.
• Design and deliver predictive, prescriptive, diagnostic, and exploratory analytics solutions to support decision-making across business and operational domains.
• Develop machine learning models, statistical analyses, simulations, optimization approaches, and advanced analytics products using enterprise data assets.
• Support the development of agentic AI use cases by defining data, model, workflow, evaluation, and decision-support requirements.
• Collaborate with AI engineers, platform teams, data engineers, and business stakeholders to embed analytics and machine learning into autonomous or semi-autonomous workflows.
• Create reusable analytical assets, data science patterns, feature logic, model components, and decision intelligence products that can scale across business domains.
• Partner with data platform, governance, and architecture teams to ensure data products are trusted, well-documented, reusable, and operationally maintainable.
• Apply appropriate data science governance practices for model validation, performance monitoring, bias checks, versioning, deployment readiness, and lifecycle management.
• Provide expert guidance to analysts, data scientists, engineers, and business teams on analytical methods, model design, evaluation, and adoption.
• Advise stakeholders on the realistic capabilities of analytics or AI, required data readiness, implementation complexity, and expected value.

Qualifications and Experience

• Candidates should possess over 10 years of relevant experience in data science and artificial intelligence.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex business problems into clear data science use cases and analytical approaches.
• Experience in delivering predictive, prescriptive, and decision intelligence solutions with strong technical quality and business relevance.
• Proficiency in supporting Agentic AI use cases with robust models, evaluation methods, and controls.
• Capability to ensure analytics and AI products are reusable, documented, governed, monitored, and aligned with responsible AI expectations.

Expected Outcomes

• Successful translation of business problems into clear data science use cases, analytical approaches, and measurable value outcomes.
• Delivery of predictive, prescriptive, and decision intelligence solutions with strong technical quality and practical business relevance.
• Effective support for Agentic AI use cases with trusted data, robust models, evaluation methods, controls, and human oversight where required.
• Development of reusable, documented, governed, and monitored analytics and AI products that align with responsible AI expectations.
• Provision of clear insights, recommendations, and decision support to stakeholders, leading to improved productivity, performance, and adoption.

Application Information

This full-time position offers an opportunity to contribute to Ma'aden's growth in Riyadh. Salary details will be discussed during the interview process.