Data Scientist in Reading

Data Scientist

£750-£800pd via Umbrella

Fully remote

Initially 6 months with long term potential

Leading business is looking to recruit a Data Scientist with strong experience in exploratory analytics, machine learning and NLP to support a major programme focused on extracting insight from complex, largely unstructured funding application data.

This role is focused on early-stage problem solving, investigation and prototype development rather than production engineering. The successful candidate will work with ambiguous requirements, explore datasets, and design potential approaches to classification, semantic search, matching and comparison of text-heavy data.

The emphasis is on understanding the data, testing hypotheses, and developing proof-of-concept solutions that can later be transitioned into production by engineering teams.

Exploratory Data Science & Modelling

• Explore structured and unstructured datasets to identify patterns and opportunities
• Build proof-of-concept ML and statistical models
• Apply NLP and semantic techniques to classify, compare and relate text data
• Test and evaluate different modelling approaches

NLP & Text Analytics

• Work with text data including titles, summaries and free-text fields
• Apply NLP techniques (embeddings, similarity, topic modelling, classification)
• Develop semantic search and matching approaches
• Translate ambiguous problems into analytical solutions

Evaluation & Insight

• Evaluate model performance using statistical and qualitative methods
• Compare approaches and recommend optimal solutions
• Communicate insights to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Ensure outputs are explainable and decision-ready

Collaboration & Discovery

• Work with stakeholders to refine problem definitions
• Turn business challenges into analytical hypotheses and experiments
• Support shaping AI and data capability direction
• Operate in an agile, iterative environment

Key Skills & Experience

• Strong experience as a Data Scientist or Applied Data Scientist
• Hands-on experience with NLP and text analytics
• Strong understanding of statistical modelling and ML techniques
• Experience building prototypes / PoCs rather than purely production systems
• Python (or R) for data science and modelling
• Familiarity with techniques such as embeddings, clustering, classification, similarity matching
• Ability to work with ambiguous requirements and exploratory datasets
• Experience communicating insights and recommendations to stakeholders

#datascientist #applieddatascientist #data #NLP #aws #python #POC #contract

Reasonable Adjustments

Respect and equality are core values to us. We are proud of the diverse and inclusive community we have built, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our success is driven by our people, united by the spirit of partnership to deliver the best resourcing solutions for our clients.

If you need any help or adjustments during the recruitment process for any reason, please let us know when you apply or talk to the recruiters directly so we can support you.