Lead Data Scientist - Pricing & Analytics

Hastings Direct; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Car allowance

Hybrid working

Annual bonus

Private medical insurance

Job summary

Hastings Direct in the UK is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to lead a team of data scientists and develop advanced pricing and analytics solutions that support the company's digital insurer ambitions.

You will drive predictive modelling projects, collaborate with senior stakeholders, and help shape the data science strategy while ensuring robust, reproducible models and production-ready pipelines.

Qualifications

• Deep understanding of predictive modelling and ML techniques.
• Experience delivering data science solutions with measurable business value.
• Strong SQL skills for data prep and data manipulation.
• Proficiency in Python and ML libraries.
• Experience using Git for version control and collaboration.
• Ability to lead technical discussions and influence stakeholders.
• Experience working with multi-disciplinary teams.
• Experience reviewing others’ work.
• Desirable: Azure Machine Learning Studio or similar.
• Desirable: Snowflake or similar cloud data platforms.
• Desirable: mentoring junior colleagues.
• Desirable: applying data science in general insurance.

Responsibilities

• Lead delivery of predictive modelling projects from problem definition through development, validation, production integration and monitoring.
• Master Hastings’ systems, processes, and technology to maximise team effectiveness.
• Identify and prepare new data features, evaluating their predictive value and impact on pricing outcomes.
• Build reusable modelling tools, pipelines and development practices.
• Lead a small team of data scientists and support their technical development.
• Collaborate with senior leaders to shape data science strategy and opportunities.
• Establish best-practice standards for modelling, software development, testing and deployment.

Skills

Predictive modelling

Machine learning

SQL

Python

ML libraries

Git

Technical leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Insurance domain knowledge

Mentoring

Azure ML

Snowflake

Tools

Azure ML

Snowflake

Git

Job description

Hastings Direct in the UK is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to lead a team of data scientists and develop advanced pricing and analytics solutions that support the company's digital insurer ambitions.

You will drive predictive modelling projects, collaborate with senior stakeholders, and help shape the data science strategy while ensuring robust, reproducible models and production-ready pipelines.