Lead Machine Learning Scientist – Contract

About Carwow

We’re Carwow. The car-changing experts for life-changing moments. Whether buying, selling, or (car) window shopping, we aim to give people total confidence in their choice.

We kicked off our journey as the ultimate matchmaker for car reviews, helping everyone pick their perfect ride. But we soon realised this wasn’t the destination – it was just the first leg. Why stop there when we could also help them get a great price?

So we decided we wanted to revolutionise selling cars, just like we did with buying them. That’s when we introduced our game-changing ‘sell my car’ product.

Today, our dedicated team of over 350 experts across the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal look after over 12 million active users (and an ‘excellent’ Trustpilot rating).

And we’ve got plenty left in the tank.

Working here

So, what does Carwow look like under the hood?

We’re always driving forward, and our people love what they do and love working together. Our goal is to empower our employees to discover their passions, create common ground, and take control of their careers with confidence.

We regularly fine-tune our hiring process to ensure fairness and all Carwowers receive comprehensive DE&I training. Our Diversity Committees, led by our fantastic employees, fuel internal education, help out our local communities, and champion initiatives for our customers.

We’re also Flexa100 nominated and aim to be the go-to place for changing cars. We’re proud to say we’ve got an impressive employee average engagement score of 8.5/10!

Bonding as a team is important to us – whether we’re rocking the Carwow Olympics worldwide, playing drag bingo for Pride Month, taking part in beach clean-ups or rallying on the Padel court, there’s always something to bring us together.

Fancy a life-changing career from the car-changing pros? We’d love you to join us on our journey.

About the role

Do you want to use data to make a material and meaningful impact in a fast-moving company? Do you want to use your technical expertise to shape the future of our business for consumers and commercial partners? We’re looking for a Lead Machine Learning Scientist to join our Analytics & Data Science team to drive the development of an innovative and market-leading pricing capability from concept through to deployment.

As a Lead Machine Learning Scientist, you will play a key role in building our Data Science capability at Carwow working closely with stakeholders in Engineering, Analytics and the business. You will support our Analytics & Data Science function working directly to improve our proposition for users on both sides of our marketplace. We collect huge amounts of data and you will be using your expertise to unlock its power and accelerate the growth of the business.

You’ll be a key part of our Analytics & Data Science team, a centre of excellence guiding all areas of the business, working as a team to pool our vast knowledge and experience to deliver the biggest impact to Carwow, its customers and its partners. Carwow is a high-growth business and this role is a high-growth opportunity. This is a great opportunity to mentor other team members and share your experience and technical skills to maximise the value they generate.

What you’ll be doing

• You’ll build, test, deploy and continuously improve predictive solutions with a particular focus on developing our vehicle pricing and valuation models
• You’ll create explanatory models to help us understand the relationship between pricing and other commercial levers.
• You’ll drive our approach for building the tools and processes needed that enable us to deliver machine learning solutions at scale
• You’ll work collaboratively with our stakeholders to build relationships, influence thinking, identify opportunities and deliver commercial value in ways we’ve never done before.
• You’ll continually learn and develop while playing a key role in coaching less experienced members, providing technical guidance and contributing to the wider data community at carwow.

Requirements

What you’ll need

We are focused on creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We welcome applications from candidates of all genders, races and neuro-developmental backgrounds. We understand that no candidate will tick all of the boxes below so we’d encourage you to apply if you feel you’re close to the brief but not an exact match.

• Experience deploying and maintaining models via a Machine Learning Operations Platform such as Vertex AI, Sagemaker, MLFlow
• Expert at SQL and Python including common data science packages (scikit-learn, Tensorflow, PyTorch etc)
• Experience with time-series modeling techniques, forecasting and prediction
• Natural communicator with the aptitude to influence and build trust by articulating intricate data science concepts to a non-technical audience
• Experience leading on key strategic business problems and acting as a Data Science subject matter expert
• Track record of delivering impactful and commercially relevant solutions
• Deep interest and aptitude in prediction, maintaining an awareness of emerging tools and techniques
• Able to deliver solutions iteratively and effectively
• Experience mentoring and developing others is a bonus
• Experience building accurate pricing/valuation models is a bonus

Benefits

What’s in it for you

• Hybrid working that works around you (currently two days in the office, three from home)

• Competitive salary to fund that dream holiday to Bali

• Share options – when we thrive, so do you!

• Vitality Private Healthcare, for peace of mind

• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill – our mental wellbeing partner

Enhanced holiday package, plus bank holidays 

• 28 days holiday
• 1 day for your wedding
• 1 day off when you move house – because moving’s hard enough without work!
• 2 extra days on your third year anniversary
• 5 extra days on your tenth year anniversary
• Option to buy 3 extra days of holiday per year 

• Work from abroad for a month (due to popular demand, this offer excludes the moon). 

• Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies

• The latest tech (Macbook or Surface) to power your gif-sending talents

• Up to £500/€550 home office allowance for that massage chair you’ve been talking about

• A generous learning and development budget to help you master your craft

• Regular social events:, tech lunches, coffee with the exec sessions, book clubs, social events/anything else you pester us for

• Refer a friend, get paid. Repeat for infinite money

• Lunch & learns and Carwow Classrooms with expert speakers who are here for a free lunch

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.

#LI-GL1