Data scientist (Various Levels)

• Ref: 7/27/DA

  Think Technology- Think Allstate

  We build solutions that touch 16 million customers daily.

  You will work alongside people as passionate as you, focused on delivering the best possible user experiences.

  You will work in a highly collaborative environment primed to adapt to an ever-changing landscape and which places technology solutions at its core.

  You will thrive, you will think differently, you will challenge convention and have the freedom to act with integrity, intention and speed; you will be at the forefront of developing capabilities in support of Allstate’s global business model; you will deliver results and you will leave things better than you found them.

  Location

  Belfast

  Job Description

  We're hiring data scientists at all levels. At junior levels, we're looking for those with a passion for finding great solutions to complex problems, and enthusiasm for quickly learning whatever techniques and technology are right for the job. At senior levels, we're looking for technical experts, leaders and visionaries. At all levels, we look for people who collaborate and communicate exceptionally well.

  Research at Allstate

  Allstate is one of the largest car and home insurers in the US, serving more than 16 million households and earning over $35 billion in revenue annually. We’re also widely recognized as one of the best places to work in Northern Ireland. At Allstate, we’re on a mission to use data, math and machine learning to directly shape every aspect of how we operate. Of course, when working with hundreds of millions of data points, computer science and programming also play an essential role. The research group has over 100 exceptional data scientists based in Belfast, Chicago, Seattle and Silicon Valley. It’s a great place to be if you’re interested in solving business problems, actually using the math you’ve learnt (like linear algebra, calculus, stats and probability), and programming

  The Environment

  We are a research group: we work on long-term projects; we read scientific papers and textbooks; we talk about ideas; we explore new programming languages; we huddle around whiteboards; we try out the latest machine learning algorithms; we think about what the company should look like next year and in five years. And we get things done: we develop the next generation of products; we crank out code; we do scrum and agile; GitHub and Jenkins; code reviews and sprint reviews.

  We invest heavily in cutting-edge software and hardware and encourage experimentation: we count CPU cores by the hundred and RAM by the terabyte. We use and contribute to open source software and work mainly on Linux.

  D3: Data, Discovery & Decision Science is a central department that supports all areas of the enterprise. At any given time, there will be tens of R&D projects in progress. Here are just a few examples:

  • Kernel smoothing of spatial data for weather risk modelling 
  • Gradient boosted trees and logistic regression for predicting probability of customer defection
  • Supervised and unsupervised graph mining for fraud detection
  • IoT: Unlocking the value in data generated from connected vehicles
  • Modelling business objectives as high dimension constrained numerical optimization problems
  • Deep neural networks for classification of photographic claim evidence 
  • Natural language processing for customer sentiment analysis 
  • High performance distributed data pipelines with Apache Spark 
  • Generalized linear models for predicting claim frequency and severity 
  • Bayesian methods for credibility and change point detection

  Responsibilities include (but aren't limited to):

  • Solve difficult problems
  • Use mathematics
  • Write code
  • Work with lots of data

  Essential Criteria

  • Must be an EU citizen or possess a current UK Tier 1 Visa or Tier 2 visa and eligible to take up full time, permanent employment. EU candidates must also demonstrate they are eligible to take up UK employment post-Brexit.
  • First class bachelor’s degree in a highly quantitative field such as mathematics, physics or computer science with at least one year of experience in a related field

  OR

  • Master’s degree in a highly quantitative field such as mathematics, physics or computer science

  OR

  • A quantitative PhD

  OR

  • 2:1-degree classification or higher and at least two years of experience in a related field

  Desirable Criteria

  •     Machine learning or statistics to solve real-world problems
  •     Statistical software and libraries such as R, scikit-learn or MLlib
  •     General purpose programming such as Python, Scala, Java or C/C++
  •     Distributed computing or big data frameworks such as Spark, Mesos or Hadoop
  •     High performance and parallel computing such as openmp, MPI or GPU programming
  •     High dimension discrete or continuous numerical optimization

  Closing Date:  Tuesday 9^th of July 2019

  Statement on Fair Employment and Equal Opportunities:

  Allstate NI wishes to ensure equal opportunity is given to all job applicants.  This company will not discriminate on the grounds of race, gender (including gender reassignment status), sexual orientation, religious belief, political opinion, marital status, age or disability.

  We are an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons. However, as women are currently under-represented in our workforce, we would particularly welcome applications from women. All appointments will be made on merit.

  Applicants should note Allstate NI complete AccessNI background checks on all candidates offered a position.