Lead Data Scientist

Lead Data Scientist - AI & Innovation Intelligence

📍 Barcelona, Spain | Hybrid / Remote within Spain

🚀 Full-time

💰 €40k–50k + equity

At Klared, we're building the intelligence layer for R&I.

We bring together millions of data points across scientific research, researchers, companies, patents, funding opportunities and other innovation sources. This helps universities, governments and companies understand who is working on what, where innovation is emerging, and which opportunities they should act on.

We're already working with 15+ universities, public institutions and companies across Europe. We're now looking for a Lead Data Scientist to lead applied R&D across our AI capabilities, take ownership of some of the hardest data and machine learning problems behind our platform, and help shape the technical direction of the product.

🔍 What you'll do

• Lead the research and development of new AI/ML approaches for innovation intelligence
• Design and conduct applied R&D experiments in areas such as entity resolution, information retrieval, knowledge graphs, ranking systems and LLM-based information extraction
• Build ML, NLP and LLM-based systems that turn large-scale, messy and heterogeneous data into reliable intelligence
• Define how we evaluate model quality, relevance, robustness and performance, and continuously improve our systems
• Explore new methods for extracting useful signals from scientific, technological and innovation data
• Take successful research ideas and models from experimentation into production
• Help define the technical architecture required to scale our AI and data systems
• Help define what intelligence we can extract from our data and how we turn it into valuable product capabilities
• Mentor and help grow the AI/data team as Klared scales

This is an applied R&D role. You'll explore, develop and validate new approaches for extracting reliable intelligence from complex research and innovation data, and work closely with our engineering team to bring successful approaches into production.

🎯 What we're looking for

• Completed PhD in Machine Learning, AI, NLP, Data Science, Computer Science or a related quantitative field
• Experience with modern ML/NLP techniques and LLMs
• Solid understanding of statistics, experimentation and model evaluation
• Ability to turn ambiguous research questions into production-ready solutions
• Experience designing and validating new technical or research approaches
• Experience leading or mentoring engineers or data scientists, formally or informally
• Comfortable working independently and owning technical decisions
• Strong interest in research, deep tech and emerging technologies
• Professional working proficiency in English (B2 or higher); Spanish is a plus
• Experience with Snowflake is a strong plus
• Eligible to work in Spain (EU citizenship or a valid work permit)

Especially interesting if you have experience with:

• Entity resolution and disambiguation, such as author, company or organization name disambiguation
• Information retrieval, semantic search and embeddings
• Knowledge graphs and Graph ML
• Ranking and recommendation systems
• LLM-based information extraction and structured data generation
• Scientific publications, patents, funding data or research datasets
• Emerging technology detection or technology intelligence

🎁 What we offer

• Permanent contract with a €40k–50k salary plus equity, so you share in the value you help create
• A clear career path, with the opportunity to grow the AI team and your role as Klared scales
• Real ownership of the AI architecture, R&D direction and intelligence behind the product
• The opportunity to work on technically challenging problems involving large-scale scientific, technological and innovation data
• Direct collaboration with the founders on problems at the intersection of AI, science and innovation
• Hybrid work from Barcelona or remote within Spain

🧭 Our process

1️⃣ 15-minute intro call — mutual fit and your questions

2️⃣ Technical challenge — a realistic problem inspired by our data (~3–4 hours, completed on your own schedule)

3️⃣ Challenge review with our CTO — walk us through your approach, decisions and trade-offs

4️⃣ Conversation with our CEO — vision, ways of working and culture

5️⃣ Offer

We aim to complete the process in around three weeks and provide feedback at every stage.

📩 How to apply

Apply here on LinkedIn or send your CV to hiring@klared.com.

If you enjoy turning messy, fragmented data into useful intelligence, exploring new AI approaches, and building systems used by research and innovation teams across Europe, we'd love to hear from you.

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