Data Scientist - InternTwinkl

Location: Twinkl HQ, Sheffield (remote working optional)

Annual Salary: £21,255 pro rata

Contract: Internship (6 months)

Line Manager: George Mulroy

Recruiter: Rikki Spencer-Cox

An exciting opportunity has risen to join Twinkl’s team of 20+ data scientists and data analysts on a 6-month, fully paid data science internship. During your time with us you will gain experience across a range of data science projects; helping us to ensure that we derive the maximum value possible from our rich and varied datasets (over 10 trillion data points at the last count!).

As an intern in Twinkl’s Data team, you will have the opportunity to work across all three of our different teams, each responsible for a distinct area of advanced analytics:

- The Key Algorithms team: ensuring that every one of our key customer-facing algorithms (recommendations, internal search, etc) is providing the optimal, personalised website experience for every one of our customers.

- The Commercialisation team: making sure that our product helps as many customers as possible by maximising subscription uptake measures such as activation, retention, upgrade and win-back rate.

- The Business Analytics team: responsible for ensuring the entire business (all 1500 of us) has the data they need at their fingertips in order to make data-driven decisions.

Upon starting your internship you’ll initially work with other like-minded interns and complete a bespoke 8-week training programme under the mentorship of one of our senior data scientists. During this time you’ll be introduced to key technologies (such as Python, Tableau, BigQuery and SQL) and data-led ways of working; and most importantly, you’ll put these skills to the test on real-world data science business problems. After 8 weeks you’ll then be assigned to one of our data teams to work directly alongside our network of experienced data scientists in that area. At the end of your 6-month internship, you’ll then have the opportunity to apply to join us as a permanent member of the staff.

To be successful we expect you to innovate, forge relationships with key stakeholders, and read up on best practices in order to identify and implement the most appropriate data-led solutions (see ‘ongoing projects’ below to see the exciting projects the current team are working on!). Don’t worry if some of this is new to you, we’re not looking for someone with lots of experience (that’s where we come in!), it’s an insatiable curiosity and innate ability to think logically that we’re most interested in.

Ongoing projects:

• Leveraging our recommendation systems to preempt customer needs and email them the teaching resources they need for the coming week, before they know they need them.
• Continuous collaboration with the conversion rate optimisation team to test and improve all touchpoints of the user experience.
• Blending traditional search engine logic (think TF-IDF) with cutting-edge machine techniques in order to provide the best possible search experience.
• Using a hybrid collaborative-filtering approach to show the most relevant resource page recommendations on each of our 500 000 resource pages.
• Engineering data pipelines that analyse customer need in real-time to automatically flag (and address!) gaps in our product offering as soon as they arise.
• Visit our Data Science Blog to find out more.

To succeed in the role, you will:

• Have a strong analytical mindset and relentless attention to detail.
• Have the ability to see projects through from conception to delivery, bringing actionable insight to bear.
• Have the ability to break down complex problems into manageable parts that can be actioned step by step.
• Have excellent communication skills, including being able to explain complicated concepts in layman’s terms.
• Be able to identify viable business opportunities that can be actioned using data.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to:

• Compose complex queries; pulling the information you need from our huge data sets (the biggest of which has more than a trillion data points!)

• Implement machine learning techniques using a flexible variety of tooling and programming languages.
• Work closely with senior leaders, experienced data scientists and a range of others across all levels of the organisation; partnering with them to deliver concrete results on a data-led project.
• Attend regular training sessions, covering a range of key technical and soft skills.

You’ll work with:

• George Mulroy (Head of Data) - George started his career as an infant school teacher before retraining as a Data Scientist (Sheffield Uni Data Science MSc). George now works as Twinkl’s Head of Data, with a specific interest in how customer data can be leveraged to improve and create website features.
• Tom Gibbs - leading the Key Algorithms team.
• Matt Thorton - leading the Commercialisation team.
• Ryan Borthwick - leading our Business Analytics team.