Junior Data Scientist - Marketplace

About Motorway

Motorway is the UK's fastest-growing used car marketplace - our award-winning, online-only platform connects private car sellers with thousands of verified dealers nationwide, ensuring everyone gets the best deal. Founded in 2017, our technology-led approach has redefined the experience of selling a car, generating thousands of monthly car sales and helping us to grow to a team of more than 400 people across our London and Brighton offices.

About the Role

We're seeking an enthusiastic Junior Data Scientist to join our newly formed Marketplace team. This team is pivotal in driving Motorway's next stage of growth by optimising our online auction platform and ensuring a smooth and efficient experience for both car sellers and dealers. You'll play a key role in developing and implementing innovative data-driven solutions that directly impact the core of our business. This includes leveraging data-driven insights to refine our auction mechanics, building predictive models to predict outcome propensity, and enhancing the user experience through personalisation.

To succeed in this role, we are looking for a naturally curious and statistically minded individual, who is keen to succeed in a data science career. You should delight in solving problems in creative and data-driven ways, and be keen to deliver significant business value at scale. While experience in auction/marketplace dynamics will help, whatever your background, you should be as excited as we are about the transformative potential of using data to optimise outcomes for the entire marketplace end to end.

Key Responsibilities

1. Research approaches to optimise auction dynamics, predict likelihood of auction outcomes, and improve consumer bidding strategies.
2. Conduct rigorous analysis of large datasets to identify trends, patterns, and anomalies in auction dynamics, translating findings into actionable insights for product and business stakeholders.
3. Collaborate cross-functionally with analysts, engineers, operations, and product stakeholders to design, implement, and test the performance of new product releases.
4. Contribute to the development and implementation of solutions to incentivise positive marketplace behaviour and enhance the fairness of our auctions.
5. Work with your data science colleagues to simulate possible outcomes of different auction formats to optimise auction efficiency and revenue generation potential.
6. Communicate complex technical concepts and findings clearly and effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders.

Qualifications

We accept applications from all backgrounds, but successful applicants are likely to have:

1. Master's degree or Ph.D. in Data Science, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Economics, or a related field.
2. Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and critical thinking skills, with a naturally curious mindset.
3. Strong programming skills in Python and experience with relevant statistics, machine learning, and visualisation libraries and frameworks (e.g., pandas, scikit-learn, stan, pyro, matplotlib, plotly, streamlit etc).
4. Ability to identify and utilise appropriate machine learning models to fit requirements (linear/logistic regression, RFs, xgboost, NNs etc).
5. Aware of production MLOps & software engineering good practice, including familiarity with git, CI/CD, testing and releasing concepts.
6. Proven ability to work with large datasets and cloud-based platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP).
7. Self-sufficient with SQL, as well as experience with data pipelining & warehousing technologies. Experience with BigQuery and dbt is a bonus.
8. Experience with econometrics, bayesian ML, causal inference, and/or auction theory is highly desirable.
9. Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to effectively convey technical information to diverse audiences.

Bonus Points

1. Experience in the automotive or e-commerce industry.
2. Experience deploying predictive models to production in a commercial environment.
3. Familiarity with A/B testing and experimentation frameworks (frequentist, bayesian, multi-armed bandit etc).

Benefits

1. Stock options - we succeed and fail together as a team, so we want you to be included in our success.
2. Annual learning budget - you can choose how you like to learn and find the best learning experiences to support your progression.
3. BUPA health insurance.
4. Discounted dental through BUPA.
5. Discounted gym membership through BUPA.
6. On-Hand volunteering membership + 1 volunteering day per year.
7. Hybrid working from home (approximately 1-2 days in the office a week).
8. Pension scheme.
9. Motorway car leasing scheme - lease a zero-emissions electric vehicle at a significant discount.
10. Cycle to work scheme.
11. Enhanced maternity/paternity leave.
12. Regular social events.

Equal opportunities statement

We are committed to equality of opportunity for all employees. We work to provide a supportive and inclusive environment where people can maximise their full potential. We believe our workforce should reflect a variety of backgrounds, talents, perspectives and experiences. Our strong commitment to a culture of inclusion is evident through our constant focus on recruiting, developing and advancing individuals based on their skills and talents.

We welcome applications from all individuals regardless of age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnerships.

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