Ripjar has recently established its Operational Data Science team - a team that ensures that the analytics within our software products are appropriate and working optimally for our customers. The team builds bespoke analytics for specific problems, tunes and optimises existing analytics, gathers data to train or retrain models, and explains and discusses the analytics to both potential and existing customers.

As such, Ripjar is looking for an experienced Team Lead with a passion for data science to grow the team and define the processes required for it to flourish. This is a new part of the business that is an exciting opportunity for the right person to create something special, largely from scratch. You will be supported by an experienced Data Science Lead and a mature deep support Data Science team that will aid you in the role; so you will have the necessary help, support, and expertise on hand to get you up and running.

As an Operational Data Scientist, you will be responsible for working directly with our customers, in a consultative manner, to deploy and optimise Ripjar’s analytical solutions and machine learning capabilities to solve their specific problems. You will become an expert in the inner workings of our analytics and be able to advise our customers on how the software can be used appropriately and effectively to meet their needs. Using your creativity and problem-solving skills you will work closely with our customers, supported by your colleagues across Ripjar, to provide solutions to their biggest challenges.

As a Lead Operational Data Scientist, you will be responsible for motivating, tasking, mentoring and training your team - as well as playing a key role in the hiring process. The team will consist of two other individuals initially. The Lead Operational Data Scientist will help shape the wider data science agenda at Ripjar and be linked to the latest developments and improvements. You will define new and enhance existing repeatable services for our services catalogue to offer to all of our customers.

When you are not working directly with our customers you will be exploring and experimenting with new and interesting techniques, building capabilities that showcase our latest tech, supporting our partners, and improving our core products. You will be actively involved in understanding, sourcing, integrating, and deriving value from new and relevant data sources.

Ripjar is a company with analytics right at the heart of what it does. The technology you will be using on a daily basis to help our customers detecting financial crime and other risks include: Knowledge Graphs, Entity Resolution, Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, Neural Networks and Visual Analytics. You will therefore need to be able to pick up new ideas and concepts quickly and be adaptable as our technology stack evolves and improves.

You enjoy working in a fast-paced environment with the freedom to approach, own, and solve problems holistically with your peers. You are passionate about technology and possess a problem-solving attitude that you can draw upon to tackle the diverse challenges our customers are facing. You communicate effectively at a technical and non-technical level and are comfortable dealing with both end-users and senior stakeholders.

As an Operational Data Science Lead you will:

• Lead a team of 2-5 individuals - setting their technical direction and balancing different competing priorities through discussions with the rest of the business
• Be able to manage internal and external stakeholders from a wide variety of backgrounds
• Research and select relevant technologies, approaches and implementations to solve a given business problem
• Implement machine learning and analytical techniques into engineered solutions that can be integrated into Ripjar’s core technology offering
• Optimise the performance of Ripjar’s analytics to maximise their performance for our customer's operational deployments
• Communicate the design of Ripjar’s analytics and machine learning capabilities and how they work to our customers, analysts and fellow engineers

• Experience in managing a team of engineers or data scientists
• Strong software engineering experience in at least one programming language (Python preferred)
• Working knowledge of machine learning and other algorithms gained by the pursuit of an advanced degree (MSc or PhD), or significant experience of applying these techniques in industry
• Degree level or greater in a STEM subject (e.g. maths, physics, computer science, engineering)
• Excellent communicator and able to represent Ripjar to current and prospective customers
• Experience with Linux
• Understand the nuances of dealing with structured and unstructured data
• Happy to travel and work at customer sites occasionally

Bonus technical skills/experience

• Experience with Spark (pyspark), Hadoop or other Big data technologies
• Experience with Elasticsearch, Kafka, Mongo, Redis
• Experience of additional programming languages such as Javascript

Why we think you’ll love it here

• You’ll work alongside amazing, high-performing colleagues on some of the most interesting work in risk, intelligence and security
• 25 days’ annual leave, rising to 30 days after 5 years' service
• Company Share Scheme
• Private Family Healthcare
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Company contributions to your pension
• Enhanced maternity/paternity pay
• The latest technology to work with including a top of the range MacBook Pro
• Offices in Cheltenham, London and Bristol, or remote working
• For those working remotely, financial assistance will be available to help 'set up' your home office
• For those working in one of our offices, there is a well-stocked pantry with food, snacks and drinks

About Ripjar

Ripjar is a global company of talented technologists, data scientists and analysts designing products that will change the way criminal activities are detected and prevented. Our founders are experienced technologists and leaders from the heart of the UK security and intelligence community.

We understand how to build products that scale, work seamlessly with the user and enhance analysis through machine learning and artificial intelligence. Through this augmented analysis we can protect global companies and governments from the ever-present threat of money laundering, fraud, cyber-crime and terrorism. Our customers include world leaders in Financial Crime, National Security, Cyber Crime, Cyber Security, Aerospace, Banking and Systems Integration.

Ripjar is a diverse, friendly and compelling place to work. We invite dedicated and talented individuals to join us as we continue our journey to success. As a company we believe in motivation and inspiration as fundamental foundation blocks of our philosophy and culture; our team are the heartbeat of Ripjar and we work collaboratively to achieve our shared goals. We value innovation, self-motivation and achievement.

We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit and business need.

The closing date for applications is 9am on Monday 11 January 2021.