Senior Data Scientist

Senior Data Scientist

The Senior Data Scientist will play a major role in developing and implementing predictive models and conducting detailed data exploration to maximise business value and growth through advanced data science and AI techniques. A key upcoming focus area will be the development of agentic AI systems leveraging large language models (LLMs) to automate customer call‑centre interactions for basic queries, improving customer experience and reducing operational load.

The models and AI agents you create will feed critical business infrastructure, offering a fantastic platform to hone your machine learning and applied generative AI skills with direct, high‑visibility impact on business outcomes. You will work as part of a high‑performing data science & insight team with ownership across the modelling lifecycle and the wider predictive modelling eco‑system.

The ideal candidate will be experienced in managing and developing a team, while remaining hands‑on and passionate about building state‑of‑the‑art machine learning and LLM‑powered solutions. Strong commercial acumen is essential to ensure every model, agent, and automation initiative maps directly to business goals. You will bring advanced data manipulation skills to unlock the value of our extensive data assets and ensure optimal deployment of production models and agent workflows.

We are delivering the biggest investment in the UK’s digital infrastructure for over a decade, with a £3bn programme to extend our ultrafast broadband network and Virgin TV to millions of homes and businesses. We’re challenging our competitors with the fastest speeds and best services.

Role Purpose

You will join our Data Science function, whose purpose is to create data products that give Virgin Media competitive advantage. We apply statistics, machine learning, and modern generative AI to uncover insights and build products that support decision-making and decision automation across the business.

As part of this group, the Data Science Team ensures our eco‑system of predictive models and segmentation assets — which feed critical business infrastructure — are well maintained and continually optimised.

A major upcoming initiative will be the design and implementation of an agentic AI platform for call‑centre automation, using LLMs to:

• understand and resolve common customer queries
• autonomously route or escalate more complex issues
• reduce call waiting times
• unlock new operational efficiencies

You will play a leading role in shaping and deploying this intelligent automation capability.

Core Skills

• Hands‑on leader with experience managing and developing data science teams
• Experience designing and managing data science development processes, including model factories, ML ops workflows, and scalable production pipelines
• Strong mathematics or statistics background (MSc/PhD or 5+ years applied experience)
• Ability to apply machine learning, NLP, and generative AI/LLM techniques to real‑world problems
• Experience translating consumer and operational problems into analytics and AI agent use cases
• Familiarity with conversational AI, LLM fine‑tuning, prompt engineering, and agentic design patterns (experience with call‑centre automation a strong advantage)
• Experienced with A/B testing methodologies and experimentation frameworks
• Advanced SQL and Python skills with strong knowledge of key libraries (numpy, pandas, matplotlib, scikit‑learn, tensorflow, etc.) — knowledge of Spark, R, or Matlab a plus
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex approaches to non‑technical partners
• Strong commercial awareness focused on delivering business‑impacting models and AI systems
• Proactive, creative, and solutions‑oriented mindset
• Comfortable working in a shipping‑product and continuous‑improvement environment
• Advanced data‑wrangling and transformation skills
• Strong data storytelling and visualisation capabilities
• Commitment to staying current with the evolving fields of ML, generative AI, and agentic system design

Key Accountabilities

• Lead the development of analytical and AI‑driven products to transform Virgin Media’s Consumer Division
• Design and implement a call‑centre automation programme using LLM‑powered agentic AI, including intent classification, decision‑making flows, and safe‑autonomy guardrails
• Build and maintain a model factory framework and robust production processes
• Develop production‑grade analytical code and machine learning models for use in live systems
• Champion a data science mindset and promote the use of analytics and AI to solve business problems
• Partner across the business to develop a comprehensive customer view, collaborating closely with data, digital, operations, and customer experience teams

Join and you’ll be part of the Virgin Media family. We’re a great place to work – and we offer impressive benefits too! You will get a generous holiday allowance, contributory pension, performance related bonus and, of course, discounts across Virgin Media products and Virgin brands!