Data Scientist / ML Builder (Early Career)

Role overview

A small Brisbane-based financial services company is looking for an early-career data science and machine learning professional to help create a genuinely predictive layer over its current systems. The data is limited, messy, and drawn from real operations, so the work is commercially focused rather than academic. This is a practical, hands-on position where your contributions can influence how the business operates within a matter of weeks.

The team is especially interested in someone who can clearly distinguish real machine learning from simple if/then logic presented as AI.

What they are looking for

• A recent graduate or final-year student in Data Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or Computer Science.
• Strong Python ability, especially with pandas and scikit-learn, plus comfort working with databases.
• Extra advantage if you have worked with LLMs and APIs.
• Someone who has delivered at least one project, whether personal, academic, or otherwise, that handled messy real-world data.
• Ability to explain technical ideas in straightforward business terms.
• Confidence to advise when a problem does not truly require machine learning.

Application instructions

Applicants should share a link to a project, GitHub repository, or portfolio, and answer three short questions:

• How does a system that you build actually learn?
• What should happen when it encounters an edge case it has not seen before?
• When would you recommend against using machine learning, and how would you determine that?

Additional information

This role is based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and is onsite. The business is a financial services company.