Data Scientist

Awaze; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual Bonus Scheme

25 days holidays

Holiday Discounts across AWAZE brands

Personal training allowance via Sunlog

Job summary

Awaze, Europe’s largest managed vacation rentals group, is transforming its data capabilities and seeking an experienced Data Scientist to build ML models that power smarter search, pricing and personalization.

You’ll work across ranking search, real-time customer intent prediction, dynamic pricing, fraud detection and risk classification, collaborating with Product, Engineering and Commercial teams to deploy models into production.

Qualifications

• Proven experience developing predictive machine learning models that have delivered measurable business impact.
• Strong experience with classification techniques, model evaluation and sensitivity analysis.
• Excellent understanding of machine learning, AI and statistics, including selecting the right modelling approach for different problems.
• Experience applying ML to fraud detection, risk modelling, anomaly detection or behavioural classification is valuable.

Responsibilities

• Design, experiment with and implement predictive machine learning models that improve customer experience, commercial performance and business outcomes.
• Develop and evaluate classification models, including undertaking sensitivity analysis to understand model behaviour, robustness and performance.
• Explore large and complex datasets using Python, Pandas and Polars, identifying patterns, behaviours and opportunities.
• Build models capable of predicting customer intent, behaviour and commercial outcomes in real time.
• Explore and develop data science approaches to fraud detection, anomaly detection and risk classification.
• Work closely with Product, Engineering and Commercial teams to take models from experimentation through to production.
• Optimise and scale existing models and algorithms to improve accuracy, performance and efficiency.
• Translate complex modelling outputs into clear commercial recommendations.

Skills

Predictive modelling

Machine learning

Python

SQL

Experimentation

A/B testing

Fraud detection

Data pipelines

Communication

Tools

Pandas

Polars

AWS

Job description

The way people discover and book holidays is changing, and we're rebuilding our technology for what comes next.

We are Awaze, Europe’s largest managed vacation rentals and holiday resorts business, bringing together some of the continent’s most recognised travel brands, including cottages.com, Hoseasons, NOVASOL and James Villa Holidays.

With more than 1.5 million bookings every year, 100,000+ properties and customers across Europe, we already operate at serious scale. But the next chapter for Awaze is about much more than scale.

We’re embarking on an ambitious AI transformation that will reshape how our customers discover, plan and book their holidays, and how our engineering teams build the technology behind those experiences.

Our strategy spans AI-powered search, natural-language discovery, intelligent recommendations, richer property data and AI-assisted engineering, all underpinned by a platform built around speed, trust, quality and real-time data.

Position: Data Scientist

As a Data Scientist in our Data Science team, reporting directly to our Chief Data Officer, you’ll use machine learning, predictive modelling and experimentation to solve complex, commercially important problems at scale.

You’ll work across a broad range of challenges, from ranking search results to maximise lifetime value and predicting customer intent in real time, through to dynamic pricing, personalisation, programmatic marketing and algorithm-led promotions.

We’re also expanding the ways we use data science to identify patterns, classify behaviours and predict risk, including opportunities to develop new fraud detection and prevention capabilities.

This is a role for someone who enjoys getting deep into the data, experimenting with different approaches and ultimately turning models into solutions that deliver measurable business impact.

We’re looking for an experienced Data Scientist to:

• Design, experiment with and implement predictive machine learning models that improve customer experience, commercial performance and business outcomes.
• Develop and evaluate classification models, including undertaking sensitivity analysis to understand model behaviour, robustness and performance.
• Explore large and complex datasets using Python, Pandas and Polars, identifying patterns, behaviours and opportunities.
• Build models capable of predicting customer intent, behaviour and commercial outcomes in real time.
• Explore and develop data science approaches to fraud detection, anomaly detection and risk classification.
• Work closely with Product, Engineering and Commercial teams to take models from experimentation through to production.
• Optimise and scale existing models and algorithms to improve accuracy, performance and efficiency.
• Design and analyse experiments and A/B tests to understand the impact of new models, pricing strategies and product changes.
• Translate complex modelling outputs into clear commercial recommendations.
• Communicate findings and insights to senior stakeholders, influencing data-driven decision-making across the business.

What we’re looking for

We’re looking for a highly analytical and commercially minded Data Scientist who combines strong statistical and machine learning fundamentals with the ability to apply them to real-world problems.

You should have:

• Proven experience developing predictive machine learning models that have delivered measurable business impact.
• Strong experience with classification techniques, model evaluation and sensitivity analysis.
• Excellent understanding of machine learning, AI and statistics, including selecting the right modelling approach for different problems.
• Experience applying machine learning to fraud detection, risk modelling, anomaly detection or behavioural classification would be particularly valuable.
• Advanced Python and SQL skills.
• Strong practical experience with Python data tooling, particularly Pandas and/or Polars.
• Experience working with large and complex datasets and building robust data pipelines for modelling and experimentation.
• Experience using AWS or another major cloud platform to develop and run models in production.
• Strong understanding of experimentation, statistical testing and A/B testing.
• The ability to move beyond model accuracy and understand the commercial and customer impact of your work.
• Excellent problem-solving and communication skills, with the ability to explain complex concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience within e-commerce, marketplaces, travel technology or another high-volume digital environment.

What will we offer you?

• Annual Bonus Scheme
• 25 days holidays (plus the option to buy an unlimited number of additional days)
• Holiday Discounts (across all AWAZE brands)
• Personal training allowance via Sunlight
• Hybrid working (we work 2 days in our Manchester office every week, with 3 days working from home)