Lead Data Scientist - GenAI

Date: Oct 14, 2026

Location: Atlanta, GA, US, 30308

Company: Norfolk Southern Corp.

Who we are and what we do:

Norfolk Southern Corporation is seeking a Lead Data Scientist (GenAI) to join our enterprise AI team. This role focuses on developing, optimizing, and enhancing intelligent solutions using Generative AI technologies, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. The ideal candidate will partner with technical and business leaders across the enterprise to deliver scalable, secure, and high-performing AI capabilities that drive business value.

The position involves working with cloud-based platforms, modern AI/ML frameworks, and collaborating across business units to solve complex problems.

What kind of problems do we solve:

• Document Intelligence: Analyze and extract insights from thousands of corporate documents, reports, and operational data using advanced NLP techniques.
• Conversational AI: Build intelligent chat systems that help employees retrieve information and interact with enterprise data.
• GenAI Solutions: Creating and deploying Generative AI models for document processing, visual data analysis, and natural language understanding.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP): Enhance AI agent capabilities through custom tool integrations and context-aware servers.

• Lead design and architecture of enterprise GenAI solutions tailored to business use cases.
• Design modular, framework-agnostic LLM pipelines using libraries such as Lang Chain, Llama Index, or similar
• Define prompting strategies, agent patterns, and RAG architectures. Ensure approaches are scalable, reusable company-wide and drive adoption across teams.
• Oversee lifecycle of usecases, development to deployment to production and MLops.
• Ensure responsible AI practices, including explain ability, governance, and compliance.
• Evaluate emerging AI trends and help guide the adoption of high value innovations.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand business needs and deliver configurable, scalable solutions.

• Bachelor's required in computer science, data science, machine learning, NLP, AI, linguistics, or related field required. Masters or PhD is preferred.
• Skills Required:
• 5+ years of experience in GenAI, Data Science, Machine Learning, or NLP positions.
• Extensive background in building, fine tuning and operationalizing large language models (LLMs) in production environment.
• Proficiency in Python, including libraries such as Scikit-learn, PyTorch, Pandas, Num Py, spaCy, NLTK, and Matplotlib.
• Skilled in SQL, No
  
  SQL, Milvus, Pinecone, PGVector databases

• Advanced degree, e.g., Ph.D. or M.S. computer science, data science, machine learning, NLP, AI, linguistics, or related field preferred.
• Highly experienced in creating Agentic LLMs and knowledge of orchestration frameworks such as Lang Graph.
• NLP and AI/ML Frameworks:
  Experience with training NLP models from scratch, working with Large Language Models, and using libraries such as Pytorch, and Transformers.
• Highly experienced with cloud platforms, preferably AWS (ECS, S3, Lambda, Bedrock, Open Search), Databricks, and Datadog.
• Dev Ops knowledge:
  Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Git, Terraform.

Environment:
Hybrid 2 days on-site and remote work 3 days per week.

Shift Work:
No

On-Call:
No

Weekend Work:
No

Since 1827, Norfolk Southern Corporation (NYSE: NSC) and its predecessor companies have safely moved the goods and materials that drive the U.S. economy. Today, it operates a customer-centric and operations-driven freight transportation network. Committed to furthering sustainability, Norfolk Southern helps its customers avoid 15 million tons of yearly carbon emissions by shipping via rail. Its dedicated team members deliver more than 7 million carloads annually, from agriculture to consumer goods, and is the largest rail shipper of auto products and metals in North America.

Norfolk Southern also has the most extensive intermodal network in the eastern U.S., serving a majority of the country's population and manufacturing base, with connections to every major container port on the Atlantic coast as well as the Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes. Learn more by visiting

At Norfolk Southern, we believe in celebrating our individuality. By leveraging the unique backgrounds and viewpoints of our employees, we can create a culture of innovation, respect,…