Lead Data Scientist

Base Pay: £60 - 70k

Individual IC4 / M2 as per our Career Development Framework.

EMI Share Options: £10,000

We've calculated this compensation in line with our Benchmarking Philosophy.

An exciting opportunity to join a high-growth technology scale-up focused on eliminating fuel poverty and improving living standards in Social Housing as Lead Data Scientist..

Role:

Location: This is a remote-first role with a mix of in-person team meetings, with mandatory 2-Day Quarterly Company Conferences and optional Monthly Socials in London and Birmingham.

Our Mission

At Switchee, we believe that everyone deserves to live in a decent home and that the environments we inhabit have a massive influence on our ability to enjoy life and prosper. One in five households in the UK live in social housing, a sector with the right values at its core but that has historically struggled to deploy innovations in the home. Many residents still can’t afford to heat their homes, and live in cold, mouldy properties they can’t be proud of.

We believe that radical innovation in internet-connected technology can ensure that every resident, every day, is living in a home that allows them to succeed. That’s why our products are built not just on great technology, but on an understanding of what people want from the space they live in.

This approach led us to reimagine the most mundane household object: the thermostat, into a product that automatically reduces energy bills, looks great, and offers control to those who want it. We are also revolutionising the way social landlords manage their housing stock with an obsessively tailored SaaS property dashboard and handy alerts on things like when the boiler is going to break.

Our goal is to perfect the ultimate connected hub for the social home. It’s going to revolutionise the way residents interact with their homes and landlords manage their properties.

Our Mission

At Switchee, we believe that everyone deserves to live in a decent home and that the environments we inhabit have a massive influence on our ability to enjoy life and prosper. One in five households in the UK live in social housing, a sector with the right values at its core but that has historically struggled to deploy innovations in the home. Many residents still can’t afford to heat their homes, and live in cold, mouldy properties they can’t be proud of.

We believe that radical innovation in internet-connected technology can ensure that every resident, every day, is living in a home that allows them to succeed. That’s why our products are built not just on great technology, but on an understanding of what people want from the space they live in.

This approach led us to reimagine the most mundane household object: the thermostat, into a product that automatically reduces energy bills, looks great, and offers control to those who want it. We are also revolutionising the way social landlords manage their housing stock with an obsessively tailored SaaS property dashboard and handy alerts on things like when the boiler is going to break.

Our goal is to perfect the ultimate connected hub for the social home. It’s going to revolutionise the way residents interact with their homes and landlords manage their properties.

The Role

We are looking for a Lead Data Scientist to join Switchee’s growing Data team and take a leading role in the delivery of our data science roadmap. This is a player-manager role, acting as both a senior individual contributor Data Scientist as well as the Data Science team lead. It is expected you will have a significant individual contribution to the planning, architecture, development and deployment of our data science insights and algorithms, whilst also providing guidance and mentorship to those within your team.

Data is critical to Switchee’s future. The insights we generate help tenants in social housing save money and energy and live more comfortably. They also help social landlords manage their properties more effectively so they can increase their reach, helping more people and targeting their resources most effectively.

A key goal of our Data Science function is to enable Switchee and our customers to make more informed decisions by turning data into insights and clear actions. You will be working on problems across areas including modelling energy consumption, modelling thermal performance of buildings, air quality and mould growth, turning large complex datasets into powerful insights. The work you deliver will help to drive a real change of outcomes in the world around us.

Your Responsibilities

Your key responsibilities include the following:

• Work closely with the Product team to deliver powerful insights and algorithms to our customers, including providing technical oversight/ leadership and ensuring timely delivery.

• Work alongside our Data Engineering and DevOps teams to develop, manage and maintain our Data Science Platform, ensuring your team has the infrastructure required to successfully deliver their work.

• Design, architect, develop, test, monitor and maintain data science models and algorithms using tools such as Python and Spark.

• Proactively identify external/ industry data sets to support our insight offerings, collaborating with our data engineering team to integrate these within our data platform.

• Drive best practice and high standards in all work across the team, such as maintaining good documentation, implementing data science best practices and ensuring effective team processes.

• Work closely with the Data Analysis team to validate our insight offerings, gathering feedback on their impact in practice and working closely with the Data Engineering team to identify and implement data requirements that will support our insight offerings.

• Line management and mentorship of Data Scientists, setting clear performance expectations, identifying development needs and providing coaching, mentorship and guidance where required.

You will work closely with the Product, Data Analysis and Data Engineering teams to deliver production grade data science models, enhancing the capabilities and functionality of our product. You will report into Switchee’s Head of Data, and have line management responsibilities for two Data Scientists.

Who You Are

These are ideal but not required - we will happily consider applicants who we believe can successfully grow into the role, even if they are not 100% qualified. We promote a diverse, inclusive and empowering culture at Switchee:

• Minimum 5 years commercial Data Science experience, including min. 1 year as a senior Data Scientist.

• You are experienced in architecting, developing, deploying and maintaining data science models in a production environment, including projects you led technically.

• Extensive knowledge of a variety of data science techniques (including ML & time series analysis), and able to select and apply the most suitable tool/ technique to the problem being faced.

• You are experienced writing production-ready code with Python, and have knowledge of big data tools such as Spark.

• Experienced working with SQL Databases/ Data Warehouses and proficient at performing advanced queries to extract data.

• Experience working with AWS hosted data platforms (SageMaker, S3, EMR, Redshift etc.)

• Excellent communication skills, able to explain a complex technical problem to non-technical audiences (both within Switchee and to our customers).

• Previous mentorship or line management experience, and a passion for developing others.

Any of the following would be a plus:

• Experience with IoT devices and sensor data.

• Experienced working with time series data on problems such as anomaly detection and time series disaggregation.

• Familiarity with the Social Housing sector and the challenges faced there.

• Knowledge of energy modelling, building physics and/or heating systems.

• Experience working in a scaling startup with a high performance culture

What are we like?

We are a diverse bunch of people at Switchee. That said, there are some characteristics we always look for:

• The desire to build something revolutionary.

• Care about the environment and are interested in energy efficiency.

• Interested in technology and neat solutions to complex problems.

• Biassed toward action.

• You're open, positive, and straightforward.

• We are not able to nurture success for those who don’t thrive on challenge and change.

• We are not a team for people who believe in negative chatter and gossip.

Perks

• Unlimited holiday policy + Bank Holidays! No need to count those Winter break days anymore!

• Everyone at Switchee enjoys flexible working hours and is the master of their own routine.

• We have a remote-first Hybrid Working Model, with offices near London Bridge.

• We will provide you with all the necessary equipment to work from home in a safe and enjoyable manner.

• We host Quarterly offsites as an integral component of our Hybrid Working arrangements. These offsites are mandatory for all team members and serve as a vital opportunity to foster cohesion and collaboration within our diverse workforce.

• We socialise together with regular outings in London and Birmingham.

• We provide an L&D budget and access to our Switchee Library, where you can request new books monthly.

• We provide access to ThanksBen - a platform with plentiful discounts and free virtual well-being sessions.

• We offer Spill, a Mental Health app at your fingertips, where you can get in touch with a therapist in record time.

P.S Switchee is a Disability Confident Employer and we aim to provide reasonable adjustments for our new hires to ensure they are successful and supported in their roles. We also practice an anti-bias approach to recruitment. Read more about it here.

Application Process