NeGD is currently inviting applications for the Data Scientist (AI & ML) position on a contractual basis, initially for three years, with possible extensions based on project requirements.

Responsibilities

Problem Formulation
• Translate business requirements into well-defined analytical problems with a clear decision, baseline, and evaluation metric
• Select the appropriate approach (rules-based, classical machine learning, deep learning, a fine-tuned model, or an LLM) based on accuracy, cost, latency, and explainability, and document the rationale
• Assess data feasibility, including label quality, leakage and bias, and advise where the data is insufficient for the objective

Machine Learning & Statistical Modelling
• Develop and validate models for classification, regression, ranking and forecasting, starting from robust baselines
• Develop fraud and anomaly detection models for imbalanced settings with limited labelled data
• Generate labels through weak supervision, active learning and LLM-assisted labelling, with human validation

Generative AI & Deep Learning
• Develop LLM-based solutions, including retrieval-augmented generation, document extraction, summarisation and tool-using agents
• Design retrieval components (chunking, embeddings, hybrid search and re-ranking), and adapt models through prompting, parameter-efficient fine-tuning and distillation
• Develop deep learning solutions for NLP, document understanding (OCR and vision-language models), vision and speech, including Indian-language and code-mixed data
• Optimise cost and latency, including the choice between open-weight and API-based models

Evaluation & Statistical Rigour
• Validate models using leakage-free schemes, and quantify uncertainty through prediction intervals, calibration and conformal prediction
• Evaluate generative AI systems through golden datasets, separate retrieval and generation metrics, hallucination checks, and LLM-based evaluation calibrated against human labels
• Conduct error and subgroup analysis across cohorts, languages and input types
• Design experiments and apply quasi-experimental methods to assess whether deployed models have improved outcomes

Production & Monitoring
• Develop tested, peer-reviewed, production-quality Python code and ensure all experiments are reproducible
• Hand over models to the MLOps team with defined monitoring metrics, drift thresholds and retraining triggers
• Monitor deployed systems for quality, drift, latency and cost, and incorporate failures into evaluation sets

Responsible AI & Privacy
• Measure and mitigate performance disparities across cohorts, and provide explanations for decisions affecting individuals
• Test LLM systems for prompt injection, jailbreaks and leakage of personal data, and design guardrails in coordination with security specialists
• Apply anonymisation and data minimisation in compliance with applicable data protection law, and prepare model cards and evaluation records

Communication & Mentoring
• Prepare clear reports for non-technical stakeholders, including model limitations and uncertainty
• Review the work of junior data scientists, and support the review of vendor model deliverables

Important Links

About National e-Governance Division (NeGD)

The National e-Governance Division (NeGD) is an independent business division under the Digital India Corporation, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. NeGD has been playing a pivotal role in supporting MeitY in Programme Management and implementation of e-Governance projects and initiatives undertaken by various Ministries/ Departments, both at the Central and State levels.

NeGD has been spearheading several innovative initiatives under the aegis of the Digital India Programme. Those have been developed keeping the vision areas of Digital India at the core- providing digital infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand and in particular, digital empowerment of the citizens of our country; some of these initiatives include DigiLocker, UMANG, Poshan Tracker, OpenForge Platform, API Setu, National Academic Depository, Academic Bank of Credits, Learning Management System.