Senior Data Scientist

The Hong Kong Jockey Club

Founded in 1884, The Hong Kong Jockey Club (“the Club”) is a world-class racing club that acts continuously for the betterment of our society. The Club has a unique integrated business model, comprising racing and racecourse entertainment, a membership club, responsible sports wagering and lottery, and charities and community contribution. Through this model, the Club generates economic and social value for the community and supports the HKSAR Government in combatting illegal gambling.

The Division

The Membership and Customer Excellence (MCE) Division is responsible for delivering world-class experiences and deepening engagement across all customer segments. The team oversees operations of clubhouses, racecourses, and Off-Course Betting Branches (OCBBs), while enhancing member and owner value propositions and promoting interest in horse ownership and equestrian sports. It leads the Club’s customer experience strategy across digital and physical touchpoints, ensuring consistency, agility, and excellence. The Division also manages data strategy and governance to build a unified view of customers, enabling more personalised and impactful interactions.

Job Summary

The job holder reports to the Senior Data Scientist, is responsible for training, fine-tuning, and evaluating advanced AI and machine learning models to address key business needs, including large language models (LLMs), chatbots, and recommendation systems.  The role focuses on developing real-time, customer-facing AI solutions.

Key duties include helping set up training platforms and model frameworks; supporting data collection and labeling; training and evaluating AI models; deploying and monitoring models for concurrent real-time usage; and contributing to data pipelines, MLOps workflows, and data and model quality (validation, QA, and monitoring).  The job holder collaborates with IT and business teams to operationalize scalable AI solutions that enhance digital experiences and deliver measurable business value.

The Job

• AI and Machine Learning Engineering
• Work closely with team members to define the technical scope and ensure alignment from requirements gathering through final delivery.
• Build, train, and fine-tune advanced machine learning and AI models—including large language models (LLMs), generative AI, recommendation systems, and chatbots—by leveraging both off-the-shelf models and developing custom solutions to deliver end-to-end systems that enhance digital products and improve customer experience.
• Assist with proofs of concept (PoCs), full-scale development, and operationalization of AI applications.
• Demonstrate foundational knowledge of best practices across the model lifecycle: development, evaluation, validation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Write efficient, maintainable, and scalable code in Python and other relevant languages to support all stages of model development, deployment, and integration.
• Generate and analyze performance reports on deployed models, monitor end-to-end model performance, investigate anomalies, and propose improvements to maintain solution quality and maximize impact.
• Help set up model training platforms (e.g., distributed training environments) and support data collection and labeling/tagging to prepare datasets for effective model training.
• Data Pipeline Engineering
• Design and implement robust, scalable ETL/ELT pipelines to ingest, transform, and store data from source to model input.
• Support QA, validation, and testing to maintain data reliability, integrity, and compliance with governance standards.
• Assist with deploying pipelines to production, ensuring smooth integration with analytics platforms and AI models.
• Support continuous monitoring and maintenance of pipelines, proactively surfacing issues and ensuring accurate, timely, and uninterrupted data delivery across the lifecycle.
• Workflow Design (MLOps & Data Pipelines)
• Design MLOps and data-pipeline workflows that meet business objectives.
• Assist in deploying AI solutions to production for robust, scalable performance.
• Possess foundational understanding of best practices in AI infrastructure, security, and data management; research market trends, tools, and frameworks to stay current.
• Help monitor, maintain, and optimize workflows for performance, scalability, and compliance with security and data governance standards.
• General Tasks
• Ensure compliance with the Responsible Gambling Policy (RGP) and all stipulated legal requirements pertaining to wagering, thereby protecting the integrity of the Club’s business.
• Undertake other duties as assigned by the Line Manager.

About You

• A Master’s degree in a quantitative discipline such as Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• A strong computational background with production-level programming and scripting experience.
• Proven experience developing and deploying AI/ML models (e.g., LLMs, generative AI, recommendation systems, chatbots).
• Experience with model evaluation beyond accuracy (e.g., robustness, bias/fairness, safety, hallucination control) and implementing guardrails, content filtering, and safety policies (a plus).
• Proven experience building real-time, low-latency AI systems.
• Experience with data engineering, including building and maintaining data pipelines (a plus).
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams (IT and business stakeholders).
• Experience setting up model training platforms, deploying models for concurrent use, and building end-to-end multi-model systems.
• Proficiency in data preparation, training/fine-tuning, and evaluation of AI/ML models.
• Experience with computer vision and speech technologies (ASR and TTS) (a plus).
• Experience designing and analyzing experiments (A/B testing) and defining success metrics for ML features (a plus).
• Proficiency in Python for model development; familiarity with additional languages (a plus).
• Proficiency with SQL (or Spark SQL), Spark, and Kafka for data and model pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML frameworks: PyTorch and/or TensorFlow (training and fine-tuning).
• Experience with LLMs and generative AI, including integration into end-to-end systems.
• Familiarity with tools for model serving, deployment, and concurrency: Docker, Kubernetes, TensorFlow Serving, TorchServe (or equivalents).
• Knowledge of distributed training platforms/environments (e.g., multi-GPU, multi-node).
• Familiarity with data collection and labeling/tagging tools and workflows.

Apply Now!

We offer competitive salary and benefits packages, dynamic working environment and development opportunities.

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Equal Opportunity and Inclusive Hiring

We are an equal opportunity employer and strive to create an inclusive workplace for all. Applicants from diverse backgrounds are welcomed to apply. If you have any special needs or require accommodations during the interview process, please e-mail us via careers@hkjc.org.hk.

Personal data provided by job applicants will be used strictly in accordance with the Club's notice to employees and job applicants relating to the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance. A copy of which will be provided immediately upon request.