Senior Data Science Manager

Job Title : Senior Data Science Manager

Location : Bangalore

For Unilever to remain competitive in the future, the business needs to continue on the path to become data intelligent. The Data Foundation team will persevere to make Unilever Data Intelligent, powering key decisions with data, insights, advanced analytics and AI. Our ambition is to enable democratization of data, information and insights as  a completely agile organization  that builds fantastic careers for our people  and is accountable for delivering great work  that maximizes impact and delivers growth.

This Data Foundation function endeavours to create clear accountability for all aspects of Data Strategy, Data Management, Information Management, Analytics, and Insights. We are accountable for impact of solutions, maintaining market relevance and minimising unnecessary overlaps in analytics products, ensuring simplicity and that our solutions better meet the needs of our users. We partner with the Digital and Data Legal Counsel to ensure that our Data Defence (Privacy, Governance, Quality, etc) is well structured and sufficiently robust to use data and AI correctly throughout the enterprise. We democratize information across the business, while supporting the culture shift required for data driven decision making.

Our Vision Is To Make Unilever data Intelligent, partnering With The Business To Power key Decisions With data, Advanced Analytics And AI to accelerate growth. Our 5 Strategies To Achieve This Are

Accelerate & simplify access to relevant data, information and insights

Build in-house, leading-edge data, information, insights & analytics capability

Lead the data & insights culture and careers to empower employees across Unilever

Rapidly embed analytics products, solutions and services to drive growth

Advance Information Automation at Scale

The Lead Data Scientist is an exciting role in the Data Science Centre of Excellence (CoE) team within Data Foundation. This team builds state of the art machine learning algorithms, maximising the impact of our solutions in driving enterprise performance. Typical initiatives include optimizing trade promotion investments, accurately forecasting customer demand, using NLP to glean insight on consumer trends from search data, and making individual assortment recommendations for each of the millions of stores that sell Unilever products. The role will partner with Data Foundation’s XOps delivery teams, other technical CoEs, and our business stakeholders, addressing both large transformation programs and near-term business problems.

Main Purpose Of The Job

The Lead Data Scientist improves business performance in the functional area of Unilever they serve, through the application of world class data science capability. They have end to end ownership for data science on major global initiatives, to include data and modeling approach, technical design, and leadership of team members whether Unilever FTEs or 3rd party employees.

Key Accountabilities

Interact with relevant teams to identify business challenges where data science can help

• Apply comprehensive data science knowledge to propose optimal techniques for key business challenges
• Create detailed data science proposals and project plans, flagging any limitations of proposed solution
• Design and prototype experimental solutions, particularly machine learning models
• Design scaled solutions and ensure high quality and timely delivery
• Facilitate industrialization and ongoing operation of solutions through well organised code, clear documentation and collaboration with ML Ops resources
• Govern the work of 3rd party vendors where needed to support delivery, while maximising creation of Unilever IP
• Represent Data Science in cross-functional governance of projects, engaging with stakeholders up to VP level
• Highlight recent developments in data science capability which could solve additional challenges, and recommend strategic areas of new capability to develop
• Lead a team of up to 10 Data Scientists and Senior Data Scientists, providing career mentorship and line management
• Provide technical guidance to data scientists across DF, particularly on the projects you lead
• Support the growth of DF’s data science capability by leading activities such as tool and vendor selection, best practice definition, recruitment, and creation of training materials
• Build the reputation of DF’s data science capability within Unilever and externally, through activities such as presenting up to exec level, DS community engagement, publications, blogs, speaking at conferences and participating in industry steering groups.
• Provide ad-hoc support to the business when needed
  
  

Depending on the specific project, the Lead Data Scientist can expect 40-60% of their work to be hands-on prototyping solutions, with the remainder spent planning and designing, overseeing and reviewing work of project staff, interfacing with stakeholders and managing team members.

Experience And Qualifications Required

(Detail essential and desirable experience)

Professional Skills

Key Skills Required

• Machine learning Expert
• Statistical modelling Expert
• Forecasting Expert
• Optimisation techniques and tools Fully Operational
• Python coding Fully Operational
• Data science platform tools e.g. MS Azure, Databricks Fully Operational
• Deep learning (and applications to NLP & Computer Vision) Fully Operational
• Generative and agentic AI development Foundational knowledge
• Automated Machine Learning platforms Foundational knowledge
  
  

While a strong foundational knowledge of all the above skills is essential, there is some flexibility to shape the role around an individual with deep expertise either in the Forecasting and Optimization space, or in Generative and Agentic AI.

General Skills

• Project Management Expert
• Communication / presentation skills Expert
• 3rd party resource management Expert
• CPG Industry analytics Expert
  
  

Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills are essential, including the ability to influence peers and senior business stakeholders across Unilever.

Relevant Experience

• Minimum of B.S. in a relevant technical field (e.g. Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, Operations Research); preferably a postgraduate (Masters or Doctorate) degree
• 10 years experience building data science solutions to solve business problems, preferably in the CPG industry (or 7-8 years for those with a PhD)
• Experience with open source languages (eg. Python) and equivalent tools for distributed computing (PySpark)
• Experience deploying solutions in a modern cloud-based architecture
• Experience managing the work of team members and 3rd party resource vendors
• Experience presenting insights and influencing decisions of senior non-technical stakeholders
  
  

Key interfaces

Internal

• Unilever operational, marketing, customer development, supply chain, product & finance teams
• Other Data Foundation teams (XOps delivery squads; Data CoE; AI CoE, Engineering and Architecture CoE)
  
  

External

• 3rd party Data Science vendors
• Universities
• Industry bodies
  
  

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

Unilever embraces diversity and encourages applicants from all walks of life! This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity.

Note: "All official offers from Unilever are issued only via our Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Offers from individuals or unofficial sources may be fraudulent—please verify before proceeding."