Principal Data Scientist

Job Type:

Build a brilliant future with Hiscox
 

Position: Principal Data Scientist

Reporting to: Lead Data Scientist

Location: London / York

Type: Permanent

Band: 3

As a Principal Data Scientist at Hiscox, you will play a pivotal role as a critical thinker for Hiscox, applying your deep expertise to address our most intricate business challenges and uncover significant opportunities within our data landscape. You will utilise your technical skills and innovative mindset to tackle complex business problems and identify opportunities for growth. Additionally, you will provide ad hoc analysis and develop predictive and prescriptive models to foster a data-driven culture within Hiscox.

You will act as a technical mentor and guide to our team members, fostering best practices, elevating coding standards, and driving advanced analytical techniques across the team. Your ability to translate complex technical findings into clear, actionable insights for diverse stakeholders will be essential, ensuring alignment between our advanced solutions and specific business needs. Operating within a dynamic and evolving environment, you will play a key role in continuously advancing our technical capabilities and ensuring the effective application of data science across the insurance value chain.

The role

As a Principal Data Scientist, you will be an integral part of a dynamic technical team, strategically focused on leveraging data science across our diverse business functions. While your expertise will be pivotal in transforming our underwriting capabilities, your influence will extend across the entire insurance value chain, championing a multi-disciplinary approach to complex problem-solving.

You will lead the end-to-end delivery of our most significant and complex data science initiatives, driving technical strategy, architecture, and best practices.

You'll be a key driver in defining and upholding technical standards, ensuring the development of robust, scalable, and high-quality solutions that enable fast, impactful delivery to stakeholders. Beyond project leadership, you will act as a crucial mentor and coach, fostering technical growth and expertise among junior and mid-level colleagues, elevating the overall capability of the team. Crucially, you will collaborate extensively with other disciplines to ensure a holistic view is considered, facilitating smooth delivery and maximising business value.

Key Responsibilities:

· Utilise industry standards, emerging methodologies, and empirical research to develop critical business inputs and assist leaders in innovating their approaches.

· Technically lead the end-to-end delivery of our most complex data science initiatives, encompassing:

o Strong understanding of intricate business challenges and translation into technical problem statements.

o Working with diverse datasets, both internal and external.

o Expert application and development of advanced machine learning or statistical modelling techniques to generate actionable insights and deliver measurable impact.

· Provide hands-on technical mentorship and guidance to junior and mid-level data scientists, fostering best practices, elevating technical standards, and cultivating advanced skill development within the team. As the team grows and matures, this role may also offer opportunities for informal or formal guidance of team members development, potentially leading to line management responsibilities down the line.

· Engage closely with other members of the data and analytics community at Hiscox to deliver value through various analytics techniques, sharing advanced knowledge and driving the adoption of robust analytical capabilities.

· Design, implement and maintain robust technical frameworks for monitoring, evaluating and quantifying the commercial impact and efficiency of data science solutions, ensuring continuous value demonstration.

Person Specification:

To excel as a Principal Data Scientist, you will typically possess:

· Bachelor's/Master's degree in a quantitative field (e.g., Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering) or equivalent.

· Extensive professional experience in data science, with a proven track record of technically leading and successfully delivering complex, impactful, and production-grade data science solutions.

· A background in data science within finance or insurance is advantageous but not required.

· Demonstrated capacity for independent, high-quality research and exploratory data analysis, with the ability to develop and apply novel methodologies to solve ill-defined and challenging business problems.

· Proven ability to design, implement, and maintain robust technical frameworks for evaluating commercial impact.

· Proven ability to technically mentor data scientists, fostering best practices, elevating technical standards, and contributing to the overall technical growth of the team.

· Strong understanding and practical experience with Agile development methodologies and software engineering best practices (e.g., version control, comprehensive testing, modular code) relevant to data science product delivery.

· Ability to articulate complex technical findings and methodologies into clear, concise, and actionable insights for diverse audiences, effectively influencing technical and non-technical stakeholders to drive data-driven decision-making and solution adoption.

· Demonstrable experience collaborating effectively with cross-functional teams (e.g., engineering, product, business stakeholders) to translate business challenges into robust technical requirements and ensure seamless delivery.

Key Technical Skills:

· Exceptional proficiency in Python (and R) for data science, coupled with SQL capabilities for data manipulation and extraction.

· Demonstrable mastery in a wide range of machine learning and statistical modelling techniques, from classical linear models and tree-based methods to advanced deep learning architectures.

· Practical experience with, or demonstrable capability for, applications of Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), and related areas such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) or Computer Vision, relevant to business solutions.

· Solid understanding of foundational statistics and experimental design.

· Familiarity with or experience on cloud platforms

Impact and Achievements:

As a Principal Data Scientist, your success will be measured by your ability to:

· Pioneer the development and robust deployment of highly impactful machine learning and AI-driven solutions, directly contributing to significant commercial value, quantifiable business growth, or efficiency gains across the organization.

· Translate complex data science insights into tangible, measurable improvements across critical business processes and key performance indicators, ensuring the real-world adoption and beneficial outcomes of our analytical work.

· Actively elevate the technical maturity and capabilities of the data science team by shaping and implementing industry-leading AI, data, and analytics techniques, methodologies, and engineering best practices.

Work with amazing people and be part of a unique culture