Lead Machine Learning Scientist

Company Description

We're ASOS. We blend our flair for fashion with our love of cutting- edge technology, but more importantly were interested in how we can bring the best out of you.

We exist to give people the confidence to be whoever they want to be, and that goes for our people too. At ASOS, you're free to be your true self without judgment, and channel your creativity into a platform used by millions.

Through our Fashion with Integrity strategy we are driving diversity, equity and inclusion across every aspect of ASOS and ensuring every ASOSer can be their authentic self at work.  We want our people to be whoever they want to be, because we believe people who bring their best selves to work, do their best work.   

Job Description

About the Role 

As a Lead Machine Learning Scientist for Forecasting, you partner with Product Management and with key stakeholders, to identify opportunities and define the scientific direction for all retail demand forecasting (traditional (e.g ARIMA, Exponential smoothing, Holt-Winters etc), tree based, deep learning) optimization algorithms (Mixed-Integer Programming, Linear Optimization, CBC, Gurobi or similar). You have strong commercial acumen as well as a passion for scientific research.  This is a hands-on role as well as a leadership role. 

You'll be accountable for delivery across multiple cross-functional teams which are focussed on using machine learning to build predictive and prescriptive capabilities that deliver improvements in supply chain optimization. You’ll develop industry state of the art forecasting models that improve business efficiency including stock availability. We passionately believe that cross-functional working is the key to any successful ML production system. The whole team is responsible for the end-to-end system, and we are all accountable for making sure it performs in production, at the scale at which ASOS operates. You will collaborate with machine learning product managers to engage actively with key stakeholders and develop an expert understanding of their problems, painpoints, and product opportunities. 

What You’ll be Doing  

Your team will be setting up and conducting large-scale experiments to test hypotheses and drive product development, and you will be expected to both conduct these yourself, as well as mentor those in your team conducting these. You will need to keep up to date with relevant state-of-the-art research, taking part and directing reading groups alongside other scientists, with the opportunity to publish novel prototypes for the business at top research conferences. 

At ASOS, as an online only retailer, we have unique datasets – transactions and click streams for millions of customers and photos, videos, and text descriptions of hundreds of thousands of products. 

You will also be supporting our culture by driving Diversity, Equity & Inclusion strategies.  

Qualifications

Who We’d Like to Meet  

You are a highly experienced Machine Learning Scientist, applying state of the art machine learning methods to drive measurable business impact & solve complex business problems. You have deep knowledge of the demand forecasting at scale, applied experience in operations research to make business decisions using the forecast, and other relevant applied ML applications. You have a strong engineering mindset and good knowledge of software engineering practices, agile methodologies, data engineering, distributed systems and ML at scale. 

You have a broad and deep understanding of machine learning theory and data science. You are adept at exploring and defining the problem space and building ML models, choosing the appropriate ML technique for the problem, and defining well thought-out pragmatic solutions. 

You thrive in leading a cross-functional team, including scientists, engineers, and non-technical stakeholders. You are approachable, collaborative and you actively nurture a diverse and inclusive workplace. 

You someone that is experienced working in a Cloud native Python Software stack and enjoys building production ready ML applications. You have experience working with data from multiple sources, involving complex/high - dimensional data (e.g. image, clickstreams, text, video, speech, time series). You are comfortable leading a team through the machine learning development lifecycle, establishing excellent engineering and ML Ops practices. 

You are experienced and love to mentor across your team in an open, respectful, flexible, empathic manner and you foster a culture of feedback. You are confident working and collaborating with other scientists, understanding how to partner on research and solve complex problems. 

You actively innovate, encouraging innovation within your team and you are not afraid to take calculated risks to deliver maximum impact. You have effective communication skills and can facilitate discussions across teams and with business stakeholders. You excel at explaining complex data science concepts to non-technical audiences. 

You will have a proven track record of delivering Data Science Products that impact business performance. You get satisfaction from seeing your algorithms shipped and driving measurable impact to the business. 

Additional Information

What's in it for you?

• Employee discount (hello ASOS discount!) 
• ASOS Develops (personal development opportunities across the business) 
• Employee sample sales  
• Access to a huge range of LinkedIn learning materials 
• 25 days paid annual leave + an extra day for your birthday 
• Discretionary performance related bonus scheme  
• Private medical care scheme 
• Flexible benefits allowance - which you can choose to take as extra cash, or use towards other benefits 

Our Commitments

We want our people to be whoever they want to be. That’s why we’re committed to creating a truly inclusive culture at ASOS, but how are we doing it?

We’re proud members of Inclusive Companies, are Disability Confident Committed and have signed the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter. We’ve also recently been placed 8th in the Inclusive Top 50 Companies Employer List too.

We have several employee networks that operate as safe spaces, to help support and celebrate our people - find out more here.

Do you need any reasonable adjustments? Our recruitment team will be happy to support you in the best way possible if you feel comfortable raising this. It’s also our policy to interview all candidates with a disability who meet the minimum requirements for roles they have applied to.

If you have any questions about the policies we have in place to support our employees (e.g. our parental leave approach), just let our Talent team know.