Role overview
WPP is the creative transformation company. We use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, planet, clients and communities.
Why we're hiring:
The CTO team at WPP is accountable for defining and delivering the WPP Technology Strategy and enabling WPP to become a creative transformation business. We are a group of talented and diverse individuals striving to implement innovative solutions with cutting edge technology.
Key components of the strategy are the creation and adoption across the business of a WPP wide technology platform (WPP Open), building the WPP Open Data Platform (a flexible and integrated data platform), acceleration of innovation particularly in the use and exploitation of AI, establishing global supplier partnerships, growing technical capability across the group, joint product development and sales growth with our strategic partners.
As a Senior Data Scientist, you’ll use data to find patterns and help solve the problems faced by businesses in
innovative and imaginative ways.
You'll extract, analyse and interpret large amounts of data from a range of sources, using algorithmic, data
mining, artificial intelligence, machine learning and statistical tools, in order to make it accessible to our
businesses. You will then present your results using clear and engaging language in a way that bridges the
fundamentally theoretical aspects of these initiatives to the business needs.
This includes translating between technical and nontechnical audiences, identifying the most important developments and opportunities in both research and the industry and building connections and partnerships across the global WPP network.
You need to always be thinking several steps ahead in the future and translate this to a direction for tomorrow.
Having a good feeling for what is realistic from a technical perspective, you need to convince stakeholders across
the network to follow the direction to future success for the complete WPP network.
What you'll work on
Strategic Research, Ideation & Development
• Conduct research from which you'll develop prototypes and proof of concepts
• Look for opportunities to use insights/datasets/code/models across other functions in the organisation
• Propose solutions and strategies to business challenges
• Collaborate and identify innovations across the global WPP network, identify technical challenges and
opportunities.
• Work closely with our agencies to identify issues and use data to propose solutions for effective decision
making
• Stay up to date with the latest technology, techniques and methods
Data Engineering & Reporting
• Identify valuable data sources and automate collection processes
• Assess the effectiveness of data sources and data-gathering techniques and improve data collection
methods
• Build algorithms and design experiments to merge, manage, interrogate and extract data
• Use machine learning tools and statistical techniques to produce solutions to problems
• Test data mining models to select the most appropriate ones for use on a project
• Undertake processing of structured and unstructured data
• Analyse large amounts of information to discover trends and patterns
• Build predictive models and machine-learning algorithms
• Combine models through ensemble modelling
• Identify gaps that can be turned into opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Present information using data visualization techniques
• Create clear reports that tell compelling stories about how customers or clients work with our business
Consultancy & Thought Leadership
• Act as a technology consultant to accelerate local initiatives
• Be a subject matter expert in our data science tools, technologies and processes.
• Articulate best practices to our user community ensuring that they are working together in a uniform
fashion.
Your experience
• Experience in data mining
• Proven experience as a Data Scientist or Data Analyst
• Understanding of machine-learning and operations research
• 5 years + experience of working with structured datasets
• A very good understanding of data processing technologies and platforms
• Solid understanding of data management, metadata management, governance and privacy standards
• Previous experience of working with metadata
Your technical skills
• Exceptional analytical skills
• Fluent in Python or R; familiarity with Scala, Java or C++ is an asset
• Fluent in SQL or SPARQL
• Working experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Experience using business intelligence tools (e.g. Tableau) and data frameworks (e.g. Hadoop)
• Degree educated in an appropriate subject
• Good troubleshooting skills coupled with the ability to understand root causes
Your non-technical skills
• A passion for data and its associated emerging trends and technologies
• Exceptional verbal and written communication and presentation skills
• The ability to arbitrate and moderate when there are areas of conflict
• Ability to plan and prioritise
• Ability to self-learn
• Good research skills
• Strong mathematical skills (e.g. statistics, algebra)
• Be able to focus on continuous improvement
• The ability to make order out of chaos
Who you are:
You’re open: We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are open-minded: to new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.
You’re optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures or our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with confidence: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.
You’re extraordinary: we are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we deliver extraordinary every day.