Data Scientist - UK
About this role
Type: Full-time, salaried employment
Location: Remote in the UK only.
Salary Range: £60,000 to £70,000 + stock options
Focal Systems is the industry leader in retail AI solutions. We are headquartered in San Francisco, California with operations in Canada and the UK, and a tech-hub in Poland. We are a Deep Learning first company. Our mission is to automate and optimize brick and mortar retail using deep learning computer vision. Focal Systems has been deployed at scale with some of the top retailers in the world.
We seek smart, creative and passionate people who want to help build a great and enduring company and deploy Deep Learning to the world!
About the Role
As a Senior Data Scientist on our Analytics team, you will own end-to-end problems that combine applied statistics, experimentation, and machine learning to drive measurable improvements in how our retail AI products perform in the real world. You will work on ambiguous, open-ended questions, define the right approach, and deliver insights and models that influence the roadmap of Product, Engineering, and Operations.
This is a senior individual contributor role. You will set the technical direction for your projects, partner with cross-functional stakeholders, and act as a force multiplier for analytics quality across the company.
What We Are Looking For
- You are a rigorous thinker who treats data as evidence, not decoration, and is comfortable telling a clear story about uncertainty
- You have strong technical chops in SQL and Python, and you reach for the right tool, statistical, experimental, or ML, based on the problem in front of you
- You can design experiments, reason about causality, and identify when a correlation is enough and when it is not
- You are comfortable owning ambiguous, open-ended problems and breaking them down into a credible plan
- You communicate findings crisply to technical and non-technical audiences, in writing, in dashboards, and in person
- You raise the bar for the team through code review, methodology review, and mentorship of less senior analysts and scientists
What You Will Be Doing
- Own analytical problems end to end from problem framing and metric definition through data acquisition, modeling, validation, and stakeholder rollout
- Build predictive and inferential models such as forecasts, propensity and uplift models, and survival or duration analyses, where they meaningfully improve a product or operational decision
- Develop statistical methods and reusable analyses for measuring performance, including detection accuracy, intervention impact, and downstream operational outcomes
- Partner with Product, Engineering, and Operations to define key metrics, implement new features, and translate business questions into well-scoped analytical work
- Audit system outputs and provide structured feedback that improves product accuracy and reliability
- Communicate findings through dashboards, written analyses, and stakeholder presentations that lead to concrete decisions
- Help define best practices around data quality, experimentation, modeling, and reproducibility, and contribute to the team’s data contracts and SOPs
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience as a Data Scientist, Quantitative Analyst, or similar role, with a track record of shipping analyses and models that changed product or business decisions
- Strong proficiency in SQL, including complex CTEs, window functions, and query optimization
- Strong proficiency in Python for data work, including pandas, NumPy, and experience with statsmodels or other relevant tools
- Solid grounding in applied statistics: hypothesis testing, regression, experimental design, and uncertainty quantification
- Experience designing and analyzing A/B tests or other controlled experiments in a product setting
- Experience building at least one class of predictive model end to end, for example forecasting, classification, or propensity modeling
- Experience with data visualization and BI tools, and the ability to turn an analysis into a clear narrative
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence cross-functional partners without authority
- Ability to work independently, manage multiple priorities, and drive ambiguous projects to completion
Nice to Have
- Experience with Snowflake or a comparable cloud data warehouse
- Experience with Sigma, Looker, or similar BI tools
- Experience with database engineering/architecture
- Background in retail, logistics, marketplaces, or other operationally complex environments
- Experience mentoring analysts or junior data scientists
Why Focal Systems
Strong Values and Mission - We are a tightly-knit team with an ambitious mission and a strong set of core values, which define our approach to business and have successfully guided us since inception.
Exceptional Team - We are a team of hard-working, fun-loving professionals from some of the most eminent universities, research labs, and tech companies of our time. We pride ourselves on recruiting exceptional individuals to help us redefine the state-of-the-art.
Outstanding Partners - We work with 10+ of the largest retailers in the world and have a world-class roster of investors, advisors and partners to support & advise us in our endeavors.
What we offerWe care deeply about the health, happiness, and wellbeing of all of our employees. We offer:
- Competitive Salary & Attractive Stock
- Generous Paid Time Off
- Pension
- Sick Leave
- Parental Leave
- Learning and Development Budget
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