Data Scientist - Farringdon

Tesco
London, Greater London
Competitive
18 Apr 2018
15 May 2018
tesco/TP/3102720/229532
Full Time
Data Scientist

About the Tesco Data Science Team

The Data Science Team sits centrally within Tesco and focuses on solving complex business problems and developing data products that can be deployed at scale to our customers. Our work spans across multiple areas including physical stores, online, fulfilment, marketing and Clubcard and we encourage rotation amongst our Data Scientists so they can apply their skills to different business challenges and gain deeper levels of subject matter expertise. The Data Science Team is made up of multi-disciplined researchers and practitioners with varied backgrounds from both academia and the business world. We strive to foster a culture of innovation by encouraging our Data Scientists to focus 20% of their time on self-driven projects that utilise their expertise to solve real-world challenges that Tesco faces.

Our core work involves:

  • Developing data products that can be deployed at scale both internally and externally
  • Supporting the automation of decision making across the business
  • Optimising processes for key business objectives
  • Conducting deep dive exploratory analysis to inform strategic decision making

Examples of our previous work include:

  • Building search and recommender Systems for our web portfolio
  • Optimising space and range within our stores
  • Optimising delivery routes for our vans
  • Developing enhanced picking algorithms for our fulfilment centres
  • Optimising online prices
  • Developing measures of long term customer value


As a Data Scientist, you will have the following responsibilities:

  • Solve Data Science problems and participate in the majority of the project lifecycle with minimal support from senior team members
  • Understand difficult business problems and prototype solutions
  • Analyse and link complex datasets so that they may be learned from or optimised
  • Build mathematical models on top of big data architectures to gain deep insights into opportunities to improve the customer experience and the Tesco business
  • Communicate complex solutions in a clear, understandable way to non-experts
  • Promote data science across Tesco, and promote Tesco across the external Data Science community

You are a Data Scientist with a strong knowledge of the Data Science Toolkit (Maths & Stats, Programming, Machine Learning, Communication & Visualisation etc) who evangelises Data Science. You therefore tick the majority of the following points:

Mathematical & Statistical Understanding:

  • A strong numerical higher degree in a mathematical, scientific, engineering or computer science discipline with application to Data Science
  • The ability to use your academic knowledge and commercial experience to tackle specific business problems
  • An analytical mind set and the ability to use your academic knowledge to tackle specific business problems

Programming Experience:

  • Experience with different programming languages and a good grasp of at least one language - Python, Scala, Java, R (or similar)
  • Understanding of common data structures and algorithms. Understanding of time and space complexity
  • Use of version control (Git)
  • Experience working with open source Data Science environments
  • Knowledge of open source big-data technology such as Apache Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Pig, MapReduce
  • Experience building production systems would be extremely benifical

Commercial Experience:

A proven track record of:

  • Contributing to the success of high impact Data Science projects within complex organisations
  • Generating insights from large data sets containing event records for millions of customers
  • Partnering with technology teams to productionize your developments and roll out at scale

A background or strong understanding of the retail sector, logistics and/or ecommerce would be advantageous but is not required