Here at esure Group, we’re no strangers to change. As one of the industry leaders in the insurance business, striving to become a world class digital insurer, we’re getting ready for more. It’s creating great new opportunities for innovative and talented industry professionals to join us at a pivotal point in our development.

It’s an opportunity you simply don’t want to miss. You can expect our investment in you to include a highly competitive package, career and development opportunities and flexible benefits built around you and your lifestyle.

At esure we're building an outstanding environment for long-term ambitious research to flourish in. An exciting role for a Lead Data Scientist has emerged to sit within a lead position in our expanding R&D team. 

We are harnessing data science approaches to build end-to-end solutions which will help our business to drive further value from data and create personalised experiences for our customers. We apply state of the art machine learning techniques to solve a variety of problems such as customer risk, lifetime value and retail pricing across diverse product portfolios. Many Data Science projects are at greenfield stage with the chance to have significant impact on the P&L. The team is central to our growth strategy with great support from senior stakeholders who are keen to drive a ‘start-up mentality’ for this function.

You will work on a diverse range of projects across a huge range of predictive capabilities, researching new approaches to push the boundaries of what we do. You will also get the opportunity to lead on improving our products as we explore new business and new sources of data to leverage against our already data rich estate. You will join a highly passionate, friendly and open team, with a breadth of expertise, working hard towards achieving joint objectives and goals. 
 

What you'll do:

• Lead and coach a Data Science function to deliver complex value-add activities 
• Build a core understanding of the company performance metrics to qualitatively inform and interpret models
• Help shape and inform the modelling roadmap and R&D strategy
• Provide high level scientific expertise for new and on-going activities within the company. Provide technical or scientific direction and expertise to all areas of pricing
• Design innovative experiments and multivariate testing frameworks to evaluate added benefits of AI
• Evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of machine learning solutions and operationalise concepts from successful prototypes in collaboration with Data Platform Architects & Engineers
• Apply statistical and advanced analytical techniques to optimise and improve business performance for specific business problems and use cases  
• Seek out and manage new sources of data for use in all aspects of Pricing, making esure best in class in utilising the most expansive data sets available
• Regular delivery of data science projects – both large and small – that drives business benefit and gives us a competitive advantage 
• Engage the wider analytical community by pushing best practice, helping coach data scientists and upskilling business analysts
• Use analysis to predict, measure, interpret business trends & make appropriate recommendations 
• Produce high-quality code that allows us to put solutions into production 
• Refactor code into reusable libraries, APIs, and tools 
• Help us to shape the next generation of our products 

What we are looking for:

• Significant experience as a Senior / Lead Data Scientist in a commercial or R&D setting 
• Proven leadership/mentorship and management experience within a high performing Data team 
• PhD or MSc in a numerate subject: Machine Learning, Computer Science, Statistics, or equivalent is highly desirable 
• Significant experience landing data science capability, applying effective statistical and machine learning models on real world commercial problems and having measured business benefits 
• Demonstrable research experience taking ideas from conception through to tangible business products and taking stakeholders with you on the journey
• Comprehensive proficiency with R/Python toolkits, preferably working with data pipelines
• Proficient with SQL and NoSQL databases 
• Experience with Jupyter Notebooks and version control (eg. Git) 
• Expert in mining large and complex data sets - both structured and unstructured extraction of data, transformation and application 
• Can demonstrate deep statistical knowledge to lead on providing actionable insights into business problems 
• Experience of modern software engineering practices, such as SCRUM/Agile, micro-services and containerisation (including Docker and Kubernetes)
• Experience with Spark/Databricks is highly desirable
• Experience deploying ML at scale via APIs (eg. Flask, Keras) advantageous
• Startup experience and working with geospatial & financial data is a bonus

What we will offer to you in return:

• 28 Days Holiday - rising to 30 days on year 5 and 31 days on year 10
• Eligibility for Management Bonus (Discretionary)
• BUPA - Private medical cover for eligible colleagues
• 25% discount on esure & Sheila’s Wheels insurance (10% for immediate family) or a guarantee to beat any other insurer’s renewal quote on both home and car insurance 
• 15% Discount on esure and Sheila’s Wheels Travel Insurance (7.5% for immediate family)
• Flu Jabs and Eye Care - Free flu jabs every winter, free eye tests every two years and £50 towards VDU glasses

In light of the current Covid-19 pandemic, we want to emphasise to all applicants that the safety and wellbeing of our candidates and colleagues is esure Group’s number one priority. All interviews will be conducted remotely via a video conference platform to ensure that everyone involved is adhering to the social distancing guidance.