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.

Data Scientist - Hybrid Working - London/Home

Why join us

In Customer Data Science (part of the Data Science Hub), we build the systems behind personalised customer decisioning – from customer segmentations to offer optimisation. We impact millions of customers, bringing them value and earning their loyalty.

This team already personalises all of the offers you see in the Nectar app, but now we’re growing in ambition and scale. We aim to personalise everything that matters – offers, online recommendations, digital experiences, communications. And we aim to achieve this using our incredible data asset, our rich customer understanding, and state of the art machine learning and AI.

This role will work in a team dedicated to foundational customer modelling – predicting who you are and what you need. These models serve a wide range of use cases – from personalised marketing to strategic analytics – driving value for the customer and the business.

What you’ll do

Solve the hard problems

• Work on the technical development of machine learning solutions and pipelines that will generate value and deliver against our strategic objectives.
• Iterate our modelling and optimisation capabilities, identifying the most appropriate techniques to use for each commercial problem.
• Support the maintenance and optimisation of existing models to adapt to changing needs.

Embody and improve best practice

• Align to best practice across modelling, experimentation, deployment, and model lifecycle management.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand and deliver on their needs, and work with engineering teams to source data and deploy robust solutions.

Be an enthusiastic member of our community

• Bring new ideas for future approaches, including state of the art techniques where appropriate.
• Understand how our business really works, including by supporting our stores during peak trading periods.
• Actively contribute to our vibrant Data and Analytics community of over 800 colleagues, providing a view on new techniques and approaches that can drive positive change in wider teams.

Who you are

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

Value delivery

• Experience in Data Science roles, 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.
• A strong ability to communicate ideas to audiences of varying technical background and seniority.

Data Science expertise

• Strong grounding in statistical modelling and machine learning, such as predictive modelling at scale, unsupervised learning, causal inference, experimentation, optimisation and decisioning.
• Strong understanding of the “how” behind the algorithm; 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

• Extensive programming ability across Python and strong ability to use SQL, with a proven experience of developing complex solutions in a corporate environment.
• Understanding of working with production codebases, such as version control, CI/CD, and batch processing.

Development

• A strong awareness and understanding of technology trends and direction in Data Science, analytics and AI.

Essential Criteria

• Previous experience in Data Science roles
• A strong ability to communicate ideas to audiences of varying technical background and seniority
• Strong grounding in statistical modelling and machine learning, including predictive modelling
• Extensive programming ability across Python and strong ability to use SQL
• Solid understanding of working with production codebases, such as version control and CI/CD

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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 10% 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. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, 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).