Lead Data Scientist

Role Description

We are scaling advanced analytics and AI across our portfolio of Pet Insurance brands, across claims, underwriting and customer operations. The purpose of the role to provide an expert technical leadership to the data science team responsible for delivering and maintaining data products powered by machine learning and AI. The Data Science Lead works with the business and functional leaders in shaping the portfolio of use cases, ensuring that value is realised and measured, and that relevant process, compliance and ethical requirements are met.

This role leads the development of data science and AI solutions from inception stage to activation and includes the hands-on input and technical oversight of the development of production-grade machine learning and AI solutions, while coaching teams (onshore and offshore) to deliver high-quality, compliant, and explainable models that improve customer outcomes and business KPIs.

Location

This role offers you the flexibility to work in either of our UK-based offices such as Bristol / Bournemouth / Ditton Park / Guildford / London / Birmingham. Please note that this is a Hybrid role with expectation of you attending the office at least once per week

Salary Information

Pay: Circa £85,000 per year

Pay is based on relevant experience, skills for the role, and location. Salary is only one part of our total reward package.

About You

People & Delivery Leadership

• Manage, coach, guide and nurture talent within the data science /engineering pool, including performance, pay & rewards, in order to create a highly motivated, high-performing advanced analytics team, which delivers tangible business value.
• Daily management of offshore teams (stand-ups, backlog, sprint planning, QA) to ensure timely, quality delivery across multiple workstreams.
• Technical coaching & code review for Data Scientists/ML Engineers; establish standards for experimentation, MLOps, documentation, and testing.
• Prioritisation of the roadmap with Product Owners and business stakeholders; translate business problems into tractable ML and AI use cases and measurable value.
• Drive best practices in model governance, risk management, and Consumer Duty alignment (fairness, explainability, monitoring).
• Investigate new data and analytics technologies and contribute to the continual development and evaluation of our data architecture.

Hands on Data Science & MLOps

• Build and review end-to-end ML pipelines: data validation, feature engineering, model training, evaluation, and CI/CD to production.
• Develop models for a variety of insurance use cases, including automated claims processing (document classification/extraction, fraud propensity, severity/triage), compliance, NLP on customer feedback (topic modelling, sentiment analysis, VoC insights), propensity & churn modelling, etc.
• Working closely with the underwriting team, integrate the pricing models into the front-end solutions and applications for quote to buy engines, exception handling, pricing/excess recommendations, etc.
• Implement model monitoring (data drift, performance, fairness), alerting, and retraining schedules.
• Produce model documentation (lineage, assumptions, limitations) for governance committees.

Stakeholder & Change Management

• Partner with Claims, Underwriting, Pricing, Marketing, eCommerce, Compliance, Legal, and Customer Ops to embed models into decisions and workflows.
• Communicate complex findings and trade-offs clearly to senior non-technical stakeholders, influence decisions with evidence.
• Measure and track impact of the products developed through business KPIs, at portfolio level.
• Run A/B and champion–challenger tests; quantify uplift and financial impact.
• Actively contribute to wider Group data science / AI initiatives and forums, to ensure that knowledge and best practice is widely adopted, and to maintain a thought leadership for Allianz.

Essential Skills

• MSc/PhD in a quantitative field (Statistics, Computer Science, Applied Math, Operational Research) or equivalent experience.
• Certifications welcome (cloud, ML engineering, Responsible AI), but practical delivery track record matters most.
• Proven leadership of offshore/nearshore technical teams, setting direction, coordinating workflow, development and performance management

• Guiding / Inspiring / Storytelling – communicating data insights to non-technical audiences

• Extensive experience utilising Data Science / Machine learning and AI in use cases in insurance (P&C/General Insurance preferred) or other B2C sectors.

• Experience delivering tangible business benefit through end-to-end delivery, including deploying models to production to be used in live business processes
• Operationalising Machine Learning Models, integrating into the business, as well as in a maintainable, robust technical solution.

• Expert knowledge of Python, SQL, and at least one of: LightGBM/XGBoost.
• MLOps experience (Git, CI/CD, containers, feature stores, model registry, experiment tracking, e.g., MLflow, SageMaker, Databricks, Azure ML).
• Hands-on with Natural Language Processing (transformers/LLMs, embeddings, prompt engineering, RAG) and classical machine learning.
• Solid grounding in model risk management, fairness, and explainability, ideally within regulated environments.
• Comfortable owning code reviews, architecture decisions, and performance optimisation for production workloads
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement; able to frame ROI and align to Consumer Duty/customer outcomes.

We support the government scheme “Access to Work” please feel free to ask us about the access to work scheme.

Desirable Skills

• Experience with document AI/OCR (e.g., Azure Form Recognizer, AWS Textract) and claims automation.
• Time-series and survival modelling for lapse/churn and claims frequency/severity.
• Experience with pricing and underwriting workflows, rules engines, and decisioning platforms.
• Familiarity with data privacy (GDPR), model governance, and internal model approval boards.
• Exposure to marketing analytics stacks (attribution, uplift modelling, next-best-action).

What We Will Offer You

Recognised and rewarded for a job well done, we have a range of flexible benefits for you to choose from- so you can pick a package that’s perfect for you. We also offer flexible working options, global career opportunities across the wider Allianz Group, and fantastic career development and training. That’s on top of enjoying all the benefits you’d expect from the world’s number one insurance brand, including:

• Flexible buy/sell holiday options
• Hybrid working
• Annual performance related bonus
• Contributory pension scheme
• Development days
• A discount up to 50% on a range of insurance products including car, home and pet
• Retail discounts
• Volunteering days

Our Ways of Working

Do you need flexibility with the hours you work? Let us know as part of your application and if it’s right for our customers, our business and for you, then we’ll do everything we can to make it happen. Here at Allianz, we are signatories of the ABIs flexible working charter. We believe in supporting hybrid work patterns, which balance the needs of our customers, with your personal circumstances and our business requirements. Our aim with this is to help innovation, creativity, and you to thrive - Your work life balance is important to us.

Integrity, Fairness, Inclusion & Trust

At Allianz, we believe in fostering an inclusive workforce and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Our commitment to equal opportunities, gender equity, and balanced gender representation, is demonstrated by our numerous accreditations: EDGE certified for gender inclusion, Women in Finance Charter members, Disability Confident employer, Stonewall Diversity Champion, Business in the Community’s Race at Work Charter signatories, and Armed Forces Covenant gold standard employer.

We embrace neurodiversity and welcome applications from neurodivergent and disabled candidates, offering tailored adjustments to ensure your success.

We encourage our employees to advocate for their needs, whether it’s assistive technology, ergonomic equipment, mentoring, coaching, or flexible work arrangements.

Accessible Application for All

As part of the Disability Confident Scheme, we support candidates with disabilities or long-term health conditions through the Offer an Interview Scheme, for those meeting the essential skills for the role.

Contact our Resourcing team to opt into this scheme or for assistance with your application, including larger text, hard copies, or spoken applications. Hr-recruitment@allianz.co.uk

For any inquiries or to submit your application, please contact: conor.mccourt@allianz.co.uk 

Closing date April 28th 2026

We reserve the right to close the advert early if we reach enough applications.

Join us - Let’s Care for Tomorrow.

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