Marks and Spencer looks to bolster data science team

Marks and Spencer is on the hunt for a Lead Data Science Manager.

The job was flagged up on LinkedIn by Mehdi Hosseini, who last year became the retailer’s first ever Head of Data Science as part of its drive to become a digital-first business.

Hosseini has also held such roles as lead data scientist at Sky as well as research posts at Cambridge University and Microsoft. At the time of his appointment, it was announced that he would oversee a team of 20 people and would report to M&S Chief Digital and Data Officer Jeremy Pee.

“Are you a data science leader who is excited to build the future of retail and help people leave the current crisis behind and get to a new normal which is even better than before?” Hosseini said in a LinkedIn post.

“Someone who has led several data science and machine learning teams, provided thought leadership to c-suites, comfortably spot opportunities in challenges, and still hands-on to deliver advanced models in production. If so, we need you!”

“Within the data science function at M&S we build end-to-end data science and machine learning solutions in retail and help our business units such as Food, Clothing and Home, Fashion, Marketing, Loyalty, Supply Chain, Growth, Customer Services etc to drive value from data and create personalised experiences for our customers,” the job spec states.

“We apply state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to solve variety of problems such as outfit recommendation for our fashion programme, personalised offers for our loyalty programme, logistics cost minimisation or demand forecasting for our supply chain management, product waste management for our retail unit, AI powered campaigns for our marketing are only a few examples.”