Senior Data Scientist

At Sainsbury’s, data sits at the heart of how we operate, innovate and serve our customers. Our Data & Analytics team is building a technically advanced, commercially focused and impactful capability, powering our Next Level Strategy and helping to create a Sainsbury’s powered by industry leading AI algorithms. We use data, technology and advanced analytics to drive better decisions across the business, from forecasting and optimisation to experimentation, personalisation and machine learning. With one of the richest retail datasets I n the UK and a portfolio spanning Sainsbury’s, Argos, Habitat and Nectar, the opportunity to innovate is huge. Here, you’ll tackle complex challenges at scale, create measurable impact and grow quickly alongside brilliant colleagues. People who thrive with us combine business understanding, technical expertise and curiosity, with a natural instinct for problem-solving. Join us and help shape the future of retail through data and AI.

C5 Senior Data Scientist – Nectar360

Location

London – Farringdon/Home

Reporting to

N360 Data Science Manager

What is it?

We’re looking for a talented Senior Data Scientist to join Nectar360 – the team behind Sainsbury’s Retail Media offering, and the UK’s largest coalition loyalty programme (Nectar), with 24 million members nationwide.

Our N360 Data Science team builds the systems behind our market-leading Retail Media platform (N360 Pollen), allowing hundreds of suppliers, media agencies and internal teams to set up, customise and measure their marketing campaigns. We develop and continuously improve our cutting-edge measurement capabilities, including multi-channel attribution, uplift estimation, AI-driven targeting and budget optimisation - across instore, onsite and offsite media. Our work enables suppliers to engage with customers every day and maximise the impact of their advertising. 

Based in our new Farringdon office, this role will work closely with decision-makers across Nectar360 and Sainsbury’s to continue building innovative solutions for Nectar360, our suppliers and partners, using our incredible data assets, our rich customer understanding, and state of the art machine learning and AI. As one of the senior individual contributors in the team, you’ll apply your wealth of experience and ideas to design, build, and improve our capabilities – driving value for the customer and the business. With a large team of data scientists and analysts across Sainsbury’s and millions of known customers, the scale and scope are huge. 

What you will do 

As a Senior Data Scientist, your key responsibilities will include:

Solve the hard problems

• Lead on the technical development of algorithms and pipelines that will deliver against our strategic objectives in Nectar360, including our industry-leading marketing measurement solutions.
• Develop and enhance modelling and optimisation capabilities, using techniques such as MMMs, causal inference, multi-touch attribution, experimentation Bayesian modeling, unsupervised learning and many others.
• Own projects, leading junior colleagues and engaging with stakeholders to define goals and ensure projects deliver impact.

Embody and improve best practice

• Align to best practice across modelling, experimentation, deployment, and model lifecycle management.
• Coach through doing – pairing on code and demonstrating standards. 

Be an enthusiastic member of our community

• Become the recognised data science technical expert in your team, bringing new ideas for future approaches, including state of the art techniques where appropriate.
• Understand how our business really works and how data science can improve customer experience and our offering to 3rd parties. 
• Actively contribute to our vibrant Data and Analytics community of over 800 colleagues

Who you are

We’re looking for a highly motivated self-starter – someone who fixes problems and creates value without micromanagement. You need to know how to balance our need for technical rigour against our need to deliver commercial and customer value.

Value delivery

• Extensive experience in Data Science roles in a commercial setting, with evidence of solving complex problems end-to-end. 
• A record of building systems which run in production, and an understanding of the value these generated. 
• An ability to understand commercial reality as well as technical rigour, and a pragmatic mindset. 
• Experience working in an Agile way, and ability to understand the trade-off between immediate value, future value, and technical options.
• A strong ability to communicate ideas to audiences of varying technical background and seniority, and present key ideas and insights succinctly. 
• Independence in proposing and implementing solutions 

Data Science expertise

• Solid grounding and experience in applying statistical modelling and machine learning in commercial settings, with proven experience in some of the following areas: Causal inference, MMMs, Bayesian inference, experimentation, multi-touch attribution, time series modelling. 
• Ability to select the right technique for a given objective and avoid pitfalls.
• Curiosity, scepticism and attention to detail regarding data quality, samples, bias and ethics.

Production-grade design

• Advanced programming ability in Python and strong ability to use SQL, with a proven experience of developing complex solutions and working with large codebases as part of a team.  
• Solid understanding of setting up and working with production codebases, version control and CI/CD.
• Practical experience working with cloud platforms and MLOps tools to build and maintain production-ready solutions.
• Ability to lead technical conversations with Data/ML Engineers.

Development and coaching

• A strong awareness and understanding of technology trends and direction in Data Science, analytics and AI.
• Ability to support in the development, training and mentoring of others

Essential Criteria

• Extensive experience in previous Data Science roles in a commercial setting
• A record of building systems which run in production 
• A strong ability to communicate ideas to audiences of varying technical background and seniority 
• Independence in proposing and implementing solutions 
• Solid grounding and experience in applying statistical modelling and machine learning in commercial settings
• Advanced programming ability in Python and strong ability to use SQL 
• Solid understanding of working with production codebases, version control and CI/CD.

Support we will provide

• A vibrant team to bounce ideas off and to support you with specialised knowledge (technical, stats/data science or business processes)
• Mentoring from Data Science Managers
• Automation and orchestration support from our integrated engineering and product teams within Nectar360
• Technical and non-technical training and regular hackathons, learning days and knowledge sharing sessions.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for details.

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We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them: Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform. Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday, and we provide private healthcare. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme. Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave. Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply)."