Senior Data Scientist

About Marshmallow

We started Marshmallow when we found out how unfair insurance prices are for people who move to the UK. All because the industry hasn’t given this huge cohort of people a second’s thought, and isn’t set up to price them properly.

We saw an opportunity to do things differently, so we made it our mission to back the ones who step outside the norm. Since we started, we’ve helped 100,000s of people get a fairer deal on their car insurance. Using technology, we serve people that are often overlooked by financial services companies, solving important problems for people who need it most.

We know there are millions of marginalised customers out there. And we know that they face unique problems that most companies aren’t even aware of. We believe that our future is helping these people by learning about their experiences, and building our company around their needs. And there are strong signs that there’s a need for a company like us. Earlier this year we hit profitability, which is a huge milestone, but the most exciting thing is that we’re only just getting started.

How we work

We’re really proud of the culture we’ve created. We push for progress every day, because we know that we’ll only hit big milestones by taking lots of smaller steps. We’re always open to helping our team mates, sharing our ideas, experience and knowledge to solve problems together. We take risks, think creatively and experiment relentlessly to meet our customer’s needs, and never pass blame when things go wrong. We encourage people at all levels to take ownership of their work, and to be bold in challenging how we do things. Everyone has a voice and the opportunity to make an impact.

And autonomy and ownership are only possible with clear direction. That’s why we collaborate to do in-depth planning twice a year, and make sure we leave with clear goals and objectives that flow from top to bottom. To make sure we’re as aligned as possible across functions, most of our work rolls up into four tribes; Acquisition, Retention, Claims and Pricing, Underwriting & Fraud. Each tribe has multiple teams embedded in it, working cross-functionally to do great work.

We’re so excited for all of the challenges up ahead, and we need more people to help us tackle them! If life at Marshmallow sounds like it could be for you, explore our culture Handbook or read our blog to find out more.

The Data Science Team

We're here to generate insights and actions from all the data we can get our hands on. This includes analytics, predictive modelling, and prescriptive recommendations. We deliver high-impact work to the business, focusing on high-risk, high-reward projects, and making sure all decisions are data-driven.

We’re looking for a Senior Data Scientist to help us move beyond the huge impact we’ve had in pricing and fraud and break into new areas of the business. More and more we are seeing opportunities in other areas of the business such as claims and with our new telematics product, Miles. We believe a Data Scientist with a proactive nature and a real desire to own and drive a business area forward could have a huge impact. Claims is a relatively untapped area when it comes to Analytics and Data Science, it plays a huge role in how the business performs and dealing with the distress a customer experiences when they have an accident. You could be looking into problems related to identifying fraudulent claims, facilitating automation for claims handlers, all the way through to thinking about how we change customer driving behaviour to reduce accidents in the first place.

This is only the beginning of Data Science’s journey to be a key innovator at Marshmallow and in the wider insurance industry.

What you’ll be doing

• Uncover and drive forward new high-impact opportunities in Claims, previously untouched by Data Science
• Work within a cross-functional team (engineers, designers, analysts, product manager) and become an expert in your area
• Influence and input to the team’s roadmap and priorities using data to quantify new opportunities
• Be a champion of data and solidify data-driven process within the team
• Design and monitor A/B tests isolate the impact of initiatives

Who you are

• You have a commercial mindset, focussed on delivering impact to the business as quickly as possible
• You can communicate clearly with people of all technical levels and disciplines.
• You want to discover and scope new opportunities that may be uncharted territory
• You see the value in and push for solid data foundations, facilitating more complex analytics/ML projects

What we're looking for from you

• Experience building future-proof data models and analytics products
• Experience driving business action and impact from data-driven insights
• Leading projects end to end from a technical perspective
• Experience developing ML models to answer business cases
• Strong coding ability in Python, SQL
• Ability to manipulate large data sets
• At least 3-4 years commercial experience
• Experience working in cross-functional teams
• Experience managing a team
• Experience in a high-growth company

Perks of the job

• Flexi-office working – Spend 3 days a week with your team in our new collaborative London office. The rest is up to you! 🏠
• Flexible benefits budget - £50 per month to spend wherever you like on a Ben Mastercard 💰
• Learning and development – Personal budgets for books and training courses to help you grow in your role. Plus 2 days a year - on us! - to further your skillset 🤓
• Mental wellbeing support – Access therapy and mental health sessions through Oliva 💚
• Equity – Get options in Marshmallow as part of your offer, and have a real stake in the company’s success 📈
• Private health care - Enjoy all the benefits Vitality has to offer, including reduced gym memberships and discounts on smartwatches 🏥
• Medical cash plan - To help you with the costs of dental, optical and physio (plus more!)
• Tech scheme - Get the latest tech for less 🖥

Plus all the rest; 33 days holiday (including bank holidays), pension, cycle to work scheme, monthly team socials and company-wide socials every month!

Our process

• We break it up into 3 stages:
• Initial call with a member of our Talent Acquisition team (45 mins)
• A skill-based interview with our Head of Data Science (1 hour)
• A technical interview with a Senior Data Scientist (1 hour)
• A culture interview with someone outside the DS team to check that your work style fits our processes and values (1 hour)
• We’ll let you know if you’re invited to an interview or not. But, as a small team with a lot of applications to consider, we can’t give personal feedback on each application.

Background checks

To meet our regulatory obligations as an FCA-authorised financial services company, we need to do some background checks on all new hires. That means carrying out a DBS check and making sure you don't have any live criminal proceedings. Feel free to ask our Talent Acquisition team if you have any questions about this!

Everyone belongs at Marshmallow

At Marshmallow, we want to hire people from all walks of life with the passion and skills needed to help us achieve our company mission. To do that, we're committed to hiring without judgement, prejudice or bias.

We encourage everyone to apply for our open roles. Gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or background does not affect how we process job applications.

We're working hard to build an inclusive culture that empowers our people to do their best work, have fun and feel that they belong.