AVP - Data Scientist - BFSI/CPG/Research

Job title: (AVP) Data Scientist

Function: Products & Solutions

Reporting Relationship: VP – Products & Solutions Leader

Travel: Yes (Passport MUST)

Location: Bangalore

Summary of Role / Profile:

Focus of the Function:

Data Scientist uses range of techniques such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems to recommend data-drive decisions.

There are 5 areas that this role will focus on in order of importance:

1. Innovation and Thought Leadership: Work closely with customers and delivery teams to find applications and business use cases for advanced analytical capabilities. Present and publish papers in reputed international conferences and journals,

2. Consultant - Identify and implement specific capability, practices, tools, and people that the organization would need to develop.

3. Solutioning - Conceptualize and develop relevant solutions for our Analytic Customers. Envisioning opportunistic areas with our clients by carrying out high level assessment of their needs and executing the associated analytical projects.

4. Pre-Sales – Lead / Collaborate in response to Advanced Analytic based RFI/RFP

5. Operational Excellence – Ensure execution of critical Advanced Analytical projects, including driving innovative implementation and insights derived from data

Why does this job exist:

Smart Decision Lab was incubated 3 years back to drive Innovation and Thought Leadership, build new levels of capability, test and experiment with new solution prototypes, and create new application and business use case. Lab has already incubated 3 specific practices – Business Intelligence, Big Data and Text Mining and Solution Accelerators. It is currently looking to further strengthen Lab capabilities by getting resources with super-specialized expertise.

How does the role add value:

Data Scientist is now understood to be a key enabler for Analytics. Timely Investment in creating the right pool of resources in this area will allow
Organization to monetize opportunities in this high growth area. Role would add value in the following ways

- Technical expertise: Provide deep expertise in one of the scientific discipline such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems

- Curiosity: a desire to go beneath the stated client needs and discover and distill a problem down into a very clear set of hypotheses that can be tested.

- Storytelling: the ability to use data to tell a business-outcome impacting story and to be able to communicate it effectively.

- Cleverness: the ability to look at a problem in different, creative ways.

How is this role unique from others:

We currently do not have a formal Data Scientist role within Organization Analytics neither do we have resident substitutable talent.

Who are the key relationships for this role:

The role would be interacting extensively with 3 other roles within the organization

1. Sales, Account management and Marketing teams – To commercialise products & solutions

2. Solutioning teams & Practice leaders – To jointly create and develop products & solutions

3. Operating Leaders – To consult them on client requirements and helping them respond to RFP/RFI

What are the minimum prior qualifications to be an applicant for this role:

Masters in Computer Science, Information systems, or Computer engineering, Systems Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems and Machine Learning with 10+ years of relevant experience

Or PhD in Computer Science, Computational Science, Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems and Machine Learning with 6+ years of industry experience in working on advanced analytics

Exposure to Analytical Concepts is a must. Full cycle experience desirable in atleast 1 Advanced Analytic project from creating a Business use case,
Assessment/roadmap, Analytic Solutioning, Implementation and Change Management

What are the key initiatives & challenges facing this role in the next six months to three years:

1. To engender Advanced Analytic conversations with existing Organization customer base

2. To nurture and elevate the existing Analytic projects into advanced levels by sighting and converting business discussions across verticals.

3. To participate in client POC engagements in onshore as well as offshore roles, and drive POCs to conversion.

4. To present and publish papers in reputed conferences and journals

5. To create futuristic advanced analytical solutions

Specific competences ( Essential)

Key Skills

- 6-10+ years analytic Solutioning & Consulting experience in verticals such as BFSI, CPG, with atleast 3-6 years’ experience in delivering analytics on large structured and unstructured data corpuses

- Super specialization in in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, Information Extraction, Information Retrieval, Statistical NLP, Computational Biology

- Proven expertise in deriving insights from large distributed databases.

- Reasonable Exposure to Analytical Toolkits such as R, Weka, S-Plus, Matlab, SAS

- The range of techniques that the candidate should have used includes; Survival Analysis, Interactive Markov Chain Models, Time Series Econometric Models, Neural Networks, Bayesian Probability Nets, Random Forest Categorization Models

- Demonstrated ability to Conduct look-ahead client relevant research with focus on supplementing and strengthening the client’s analytics agenda with newer tools and techniques that can better answer business questions.

- Strong written and oral communications skills

Specific competences (Desirable)

- Ability to Prioritize, Consultative mindset & Time management skills

- Reasonable Exposure to Open Source Text Mining paradigms such as OpenNLP, OpenCalais, StanfordNLP, GATE, UIMA, Lucene

- High degree of skill and experience in the use of SAS (including Enterprise Miner), SPSS, EViews, R, Mathematica, PEPA, among other tools.

- Strong research publication record in top international journals and conference.

Senior Data Scientist who can design and develop solutions using statistics and mathematical models on large data sets for the financial services business. This role will be working in the big data practice, will be leading teams across a across a multi-shore data-centric organization and will be responsible for advanced analytics project delivery, execution and support.

- Expert in data analysis and statistical modeling

- Expert in Big Data solutions and Hadoop Ecosystem including MapReduce framework

- Expert in NLP processes including open source toolsets (Solr and Lucene)

- Statistical Modeling Languages: R, Python, Strata

- Modeling tools/applications/framework: SPSS; Matlab; SAS

- Expert in Unix

- Expert in C/Java/Python/PIGLatin (2 or more)

- Proficient in analytical and problem solving ability

- Proficient in data warehousing designs and technology

- Good knowledge in data architecture and database technologies

- Track record of leading Advanced Analytics strategic initiatives through business collaboration

- Ability to lead multi-shore teams

- Knowledge of Wealth Management business

- PhD in Economics or Math

- Strategic Consulting experience a plus

Contact at sweta.k@mancerconsulting.com