Head of Machine Learning

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 over 250 across 4 locations.

Motorway is now valued at over $1 billion and is backed by some of the world’s leading technology investors, having raised £143 million in Series C funding. This is a unique opportunity to join a fast-growing scale-up at a crucial phase of growth and help change an industry for the better.

About the role

As the first dedicated leader of machine learning at Motorway, this is a unique opportunity to grow our machine learning team and develop industry-leading technology to fulfil our mission of building the car market of tomorrow.

You’ll work on exciting projects leveraging machine learning technology to aid vehicle valuation, profiling, damage detection and document capture. You’ll get hands-on, using cutting edge tools to help the team get our machine learning projects developed, deployed and maintained.

At the same time, you’ll play a key role in shaping the short, medium, and long term strategy and priorities for the ML team in alignment with the broader company strategy, then build out the team of ML Engineers and Data Scientists to deliver that strategy. You’ll also mentor and develop our existing team of talented, driven, enthusiastic ML engineers and Data Scientists, helping them grow both personally and professionally.

As a team we move fast, we’re always looking for new ideas and we’re very transparent about the decisions we make and why we make them. We’re placing data scientists throughout the company - in product, business and platform teams - to ensure machine learning is at the heart of what we do. We work with BigQuery, _dbt, Kubeflow, Vertex AI, Looker and Hex.

Requirements

• You have experience developing long-term ML strategy and will help define the machine learning roadmap for the team
• You’ve managed the execution of an ML team’s projects end-to-end, balance competing priorities, and keep stakeholders informed
• You’ve scaled and grown a team by hiring and onboarding new team members, and/or by fostering internal and external collaborations
• You can demonstrate ability to lead a team conducting research, development, and deployment of machine learning technology
• You’ll contribute to best practices, improve internal processes for development of models from concept to deployment; helping us become an exceptional place to work for the ambitious, highly motivated people that we hire
• You have a strong track record of delivering ML projects that have had a positive impact on customers, and you know ML infrastructure inside out, including data collection, labelling, storage and processing
• You have previous experience of, and passion for, people management with a view to supporting the growth career development of the DS and ML team.

Benefits

• A competitive salary.
• Annual learning budget with access to General Assembly courses, an Audible subscription and hundreds of books and online lessons.
• BUPA health insurance.
• Pension scheme.
• Motorway car leasing scheme - lease a zero-emissions electric vehicle at a significant discount
• Enhanced maternity/paternity leave.
• Flexible working (approximately 2-3 days in the office a week) with the option to work fully remote for a month per year.
• Top spec M1 MacBook Pro and accessories.
• Regular social events.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• The chance to join a rapidly growing, revenue-generating startup and build products that will change an industry.
• The chance to work with the latest and greatest technologies, free from legacy systems and red tape.
• If you’re into cars, opportunities to work with vehicle data and learn about the automotive industry. We also have some fun, car-related activities (as well as non-car fun too!)

Equal Opportunities Statement:

Motorway is committed to equality of opportunity for all employees. We work to provide a supportive and inclusive environment where all individuals 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.

Given the continued spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus), all interviews will be conducted by phone or virtual connection to protect our candidates and employees.

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