Career profiles

Data scientists share their career stories (so far) – from first jobs to current challenges to future goals

Photo of Niclas Thomas.

‘I fell in love with math, really, and fell into data science because of that’

Leadership
Management
Communication

A passion for solving mathematical problems led Niclas Thomas to a PhD in machine learning and then a career in data science in the retail sphere. Now head of data science for clothing retailer Next, Thomas reflects on his career journey so far.

Oct 4, 2023
Brian Tarran
Photo of Albert Lee. Photo supplied by Albert Lee, used with permission.

‘Living my identity takes courage. It is the same courage necessary to start a new business’

Consulting
Leadership
Econometrics
Sampling
Machine learning

Albert Lee, the founding partner at Summit Consulting, describes his career journey – from mathematics and economics at university to the birth of data science and building a company from scratch.

Jun 28, 2023
Brian Tarran
Photo of Claire Morton. Photo supplied by Claire Morton, used with permission.

‘I was inspired by the power that numerical data have to tell stories and promote policy change’

Education
Research
Policy
Mentoring
Statistical literacy

Claire Morton is an undergraduate student at Stanford University. In this Q&A, Claire explains how a high school job in a cell biology lab led to college studies in mathematical and computational science and environmental justice.

Jun 28, 2023
Brian Tarran
Photo of Chanuki Seresinhe. Photo supplied by Chanuki Seresinhe, used with permission.

‘Once I started to see what was possible with data science, there was no going back’

Internet
Real estate
Leadership
Statistics
Stakeholder engagement

Chanuki Seresinhe is head of data science at Zoopla and Hometrack. This is her career story so far – from researching beautiful places to helping web users buy, sell and rent property spaces.

Jun 20, 2023
Brian Tarran
Black and white portrait photo of Jasmine Holdsworth. Still from Real World Data Science video interview.

‘For me, data science is about bridging the gap between business requirements and the data that businesses have’

Data analysis
SQL
R
Bootcamps
Education

Jasmine Holdsworth ‘fell in love’ with data science while employed as a data analyst at Stack Overflow. Now working as a data scientist at Expedia Group, she explains how inspiring mentors, R-Ladies meetups, and a commitment to learning (and teaching) helped shape her career path.

May 24, 2023
Brian Tarran
Black and white portrait photo of Sami Rahman. Photo supplied by Sami Rahman, used with permission.

‘I always thought someone like me couldn’t work in data, let alone data science’

Publishing
Data engineering
Data strategy
Machine learning

Sami Rahman, head of data engineering and data platform at Penguin Random House, parlayed a psychology degree into a data science career – inspired by a talk on machine learning’s application to human behaviour.

Apr 24, 2023
Brian Tarran
Black and white portrait photo of Tamanna Haque.

‘Data science challenges you to keep learning – there’ll always be new advances in the field’

Automotive
Analytics
Leadership
Machine learning

Tamanna Haque, lead data scientist at Jaguar Land Rover, shares her route into data science: from pursuing a maths degree at Manchester to analysing vehicle data for a major automotive manufacturer.

Mar 28, 2023
Brian Tarran
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