Lead Data Scientist

Who we're looking for

The role is part of the Client Insight Unit - a business facing team focusing on delivering data insights to a diverse and global set of stakeholders across Distribution, Product & Marketing. In addition, the role holder will be a member of Schroders' wider Data Insights Community, a team of professional data scientists collaborating and working together across the organisation. As part of this the role holder will participate in data science knowledge sharing, and both contribute to and draw upon the expertise of the broader Schroders community of data professionals.

About Schroders

We're a global investment manager. We help institutions, intermediaries and individuals around the world invest money to meet their goals, fulfil their ambitions, and prepare for the future.

We have around 5,000 people on six continents. And we've been around for over 200 years, but keep adapting as society and technology changes. What doesn't change is our commitment to helping our clients, and society, prosper.

The base

We moved into our new HQ in the City of London in 2018. We're close to our clients, in the heart of the UK's financial centre. And we have everything we need to work flexibly.

The team

The Product and Marketing & Communications divisions partner with both our Investment and Distribution arms to deliver on two primary objectives: leading product strategy to ensure alignment with client needs and good governance; and to drive growth through the creation, execution and promotion of Schroders' investment products and solutions capabilities.

As a department we are looking to embed data into the centre of everything that we do and develop an ecosystem where data driven insights shape day to day decision making. This ranges from suggesting which investment strategies we need to monitor, develop and price up, to what content we need to write about and target through our digital channels.

The newly formed Product and Marketing Data Insights team is driving this agenda forward. The team uses data science skills with technologies to unlock the value in data for decision-making. This encompasses everything from running ad hoc research projects, to developing proof of concepts, building scalable, automated solutions, and integrating these into the day to day lives of the division.

What you'll do

This role will be part of the CIU Data Science team. This team was created about 2 years ago and has achieved great recognition and results in its short life, through having helped the business identify new prospects and reduce churn, thanks to creatively designed machine learning models and algorithms.

The Lead Data Scientist will engage with internal customers, understand their needs and deliver insights, recommendations and tools to shape their actions. This will involve the application of advanced analytical methodologies including predictive modelling, recommendation engines and statistical assessments on complex and often disjointed datasets, and the output will take the form of reports and presentations, or the development of prototypes and dashboards. This requires a blend of skills including programming, data analysis and statistics, as well as data-led story telling, communication and business expertise. Additionally, creative and innovative thinking, a proactive work ethic, attention to the finer details and the ability to challenge the status quo are also valuable traits.

You will work as part of a scrum team, together with Machine Learning engineers and analyst developers, so data sets can be onboarded for analysis, and models scaled and automated for implementation. You will also be in close collaboration with the rest of teams within the CIU, as we are all dedicated to providing the best possible outcomes for our internal customers, this ranges from ever-improving data quality and reporting, to state of the art CRM and Marketing systems, alongside ensuring value is derived from the tools through engagement and adoption by end users.

As a senior member of the team, you will be regularly leading consultative discussions with senior colleagues to understand their business questions and shape the planned work and outputs, as well as supporting and guiding analytical work being done by more junior members of the team. You will also be leading discussions with colleagues in the Technology teams to ensure we have the right tools and data sets to perform the analyses required.
You will have 2 lines of mentorship. Your line manager will be the Head of Client Data Science, providing you with day to day support and providing a clear picture of where most business value can be created. The areas of focus will be shaped by the Head of Product and Marketing Insights, who owns the oversight, prioritisation and roadmap of the function.

Responsibilities

• Delivery of both ad-hoc analysis requests from Product and Marketing stakeholders, as well as proactive value-add research delivered through reports, dashboards, presentations, etc.
• Exploration of new data sets to assess their value towards existing or future book of work
• Owning project design and end to end delivery
• Managing and mentoring junior data scientists
• Creation of self-service analytical tools and dashboards. This would be in cases where a question or request is likely to be repeated by other members.
• Contributing towards the creation of a set of tools, techniques and practices that maximise the impact and efficiency of the team in...
• turning raw data into useful and analysable derived data sets, and
• developing re-usable analytical and visualisation methods
• Work with other members of the CIU, the Data Insights Community, and Technology to develop and enhance our technical tools including steering the development of the analytics data warehouse for enterprise data, machine learning operations and connectivity of our various internal data systems.
• Sharing data science knowledge to the wider DIU and CIU Functions.

The knowledge, experience and qualifications you need

• Strength in Maths, Statistics, and the craft of creating actionable insights that non-technical stakeholders can act upon.
• Programming/automation experience in Python and SQL
• Deployment of ML models into a production environment
• Effective communication of results, including visualisation and presentation skills.
• Ability to communicate with senior stakeholders and to manage expectations, making changes stick throughout the organisation
• Creativity and problem solving
• Previous commercial experience in an advanced analytical role
• Commercial/results focus
• Pragmatic, action-oriented

The knowledge, experience and qualifications that will help

• Relevant degree subject (e.g. Statistics, OR, Data Science, any Science)
• Experience with cloud based technologies (AWS, Azure etc.)
• Familiarity with SageMaker, Denodo, Snowflake, etc.
• B2B/Asset Management / Investment practices
• Experience utilising marketing datasets and technologies covering web, social, direct/brand activities, advertising platforms and CRM
• Team Management and mentoring

We're looking for the best, whoever they are

Schroders is an equal opportunities employer. You're welcome here whatever your socio-economic background, race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious belief, age or disability.