Senior Data Scientist

Job Purpose

We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join our expanding Data Science community at Royal Mail as we strengthen our organisation in the areas of Data Science and Data-Driven decision making.

You’ll play a key role in using data and Data Science to optimise solutions and operations, enabling data-driven decision-making across RMG to deliver value for our customers. You will be using cutting-edge technologies and Data Science techniques to process, creatively analyse and model large volumes of complex data. The insights gained will support new product and feature development, advance our operations, and contribute to a host of exciting new projects.

You will be responsible for leading complex projects, end-to-end through the Data Science/Machine Learning lifecycle. You will be working with product teams and stakeholders to identify problem statements that can be solved using data science, machine learning and the automation of the process.

You will be working with multi-disciplinary product/project teams and stakeholders to identify problem statements that can be solved using data analytics and innovation. Collaboratively operating to develop, design, and implement novel solutions, ensuring these are tested, documented, and supported across our strategic portfolios. This is a crucial role to implement innovative data solutions to deliver greatest value to our customers, shareholders, and team Royal Mail.

The role will be embedded within the newly formed Data, Analytics and Innovation team. We offer flexible working, paid parental leave and are committed to ensuring a culture of diversity and inclusion. We are passionate about supporting a full range of talented and diverse team members who want to join us and do their best work regardless of their backgrounds. As a newly formed team we are developing new processes for learning and development and engagement, building an environment with a focus on knowledge sharing and collaboration. All team members will have opportunities for mentorship, continuous career development and to help develop and support the technical community across the team and wider RMG organisation, helping develop and nurture our community to generate ideas.

Key Accountabilities

• Be responsible and a technical lead within a multi-disciplinary team of technical and business experts to deliver significant and measurable value.
• Work with complex and large data sets and provide data-driven solutions, insights and recommendations to the business.
• Develop and apply state-of-the-art data science and artificial intelligence techniques to solve Royal Mail’s business challenges.
• Present, disseminate and explain our work via presentations, reports, external papers and blogs and well-documented software packages.
• Build, validate, manage, deploy and support models and algorithms onto Google Cloud Platform.
• Solve complex business problems through data science techniques, using statistical knowledge to support hypothesis testing, experiments and inferences.
• Collaborate and engage effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Actively contribute to and re-use Data Science community best practices.

Key Dimensions

• Significant, demonstrable experience developing end-to-end advanced statistical, machine learning or optimisation systems including data cleansing, exploratory data analysis, model development, training, evaluation, visualisation and monitoring.
• Understanding of the importance of good practices for producing reproducible analyses and reliable data science systems (e.g. version control, issue tracking, experiment tracking, testing).
• Experience and confidence in mentoring more junior members of the team.
• Fluency in at least one programming language used in data science or artificial intelligence. Python is our language of choice, but we welcome demonstrable knowledge of other languages together with an enthusiasm for learning new languages.
• Understanding of cloud computing platforms (e.g. GCP, AWS, Azure)
• Understanding of relational databases and SQL.

Key Skills and Experience

We welcome candidates with a passion for understanding and using data, analytics and innovation to drive business value. We welcome candidates with several of the following capabilities:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent knowledge and practical experience in a field with significant use of both computer programming and advanced statistical or quantitative methods.
• Master’s or PhD in a quantitative subject.
• Experience converting business problems into end-to-end, high-impact data solutions.
• Leadership experience to drive positive change and collaboration with all levels and disciplines.
• Knowledge of and practical experience developing machine learning systems to solve challenging problems in industry.
• Knowledge of and practical experience applying advanced statistical modelling and experimentation to produce data-driven, evidence-based insights.
• Experience articulating business questions and using mathematical techniques to develop and evaluate data-driven solutions.
• Deep understanding in one or more key areas of data science (e.g. deep learning, causal inference, scalable Bayesian methods) and how they may be used to solve large-scale problems in industry.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Practical experience and understanding of working in multi-disciplinary project teams.
• Experience authoring technical and non-technical reports or research papers and giving presentations or leading classes.
• Excellent strategic decision-making, problem solving and analytical skills.
• Dependable organisational skills and the ability to work quickly, calmly and efficiently under pressure, producing high quality work to tight deadlines.

Location – London/Flexible

We are an inclusive employer with equality, diversity and fairness at the heart of our values and we’re proud to be recognised in The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2021 for an 8th consecutive year. We welcome applications from individuals from diverse backgrounds and are committed to promoting fair participation and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants. 

We are happy to support flexible working and would welcome having a conversation with you about how we could support your needs.