Lead Data Scientist at Vodacom January, 2017

Lead Data Scientist

To provides deep technical expertise to the local business (colleagues and other data scientists).
Governs technical and methodology approach of the local team and builds capability of others.
Develops key predictive models and products, and manages the team of Data Scientists to execute against the rest of the local demand plan.
Engages with senior stakeholders across the business to advise and solve complex problems, being seen as the local technical expert.
Acts as the principal technical expert in the operating company, identifying opportunities to make a commercial difference and leads the development of analytics initiatives to meet business requirements.
Translates complex datasets into strategic insights for the business and communicates simply to non-technical audiences, visualising results, to create understanding and solution buy-in.
Develops analytics products to solve real business problems, taking account of user needs and technology and operational landscape.
Identifies new analytics trends and opportunities to drive the innovation agenda across business functions & Advanced Analytics.
Supports the prioritisation of both internal and external data assets and works with technology in setting key requirements for data sourcing.
Recognised as an expert in the community, mentoring and advising colleagues on statistical techniques, algorithms and data.

Core competencies, knowledge and experience:

Significant experience in Big Data analytics & deployment of models and algorithms from large volumes of structured and/or unstructured data in a commercial /consumer environment.
Ability to test hypotheses from raw data sets, draw meaningful conclusions, and effectively communicate results verbally, in writing, and through effective visualization.
Strong knowledge of Big Data technology (e.g. Hadoop MR, interactive SQL on Hadoop, NoSQL, Spark, R, SAS, SciPy, Tableau, GIS).
Deep and broad statistical modelling expertise in various domains
Ability to work cross functional teams to translate business issues into potential analytics solution.

Must have technical / professional qualifications:

Master’s or Bachelor’s (or equivalent) in quantitative fields like Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, Comp Proficient in statistical packages and ML libraries (e.g. R, Python SciPy and NLTK, Spark MLlib, SAS)
Familiar with leading visualisation tools (e.g. Tableau, Qlikview)
Familiar with implementing data transformations and algorithms in common programming languages
Strong communication skills with prior experience communicating analytics results to senior management
Computer Science or Engineering
Proficient in statistical packages and ML libraries (e.g. R, Python SciPy and NLTK, Spark MLlib, SAS)
Familiar with leading visualisation tools (e.g. Tableau, Qlikview)
Familiar with implementing data transformations and algorithms in common programming languages
Strong communication skills with prior experience communicating analytics results to senior management

Lead Data Scientist at Vodacom