Business Engineering – Data Science Developer

Rothesay is the UK’s largest pensions insurance specialist, purpose-built to protect pension schemes and their members’ pensions. With over £70 billion of assets under management, we secure the pensions of more than one million people and pay out, on average, approximately £300 million in pension payments each month.

Rothesay is dedicated to providing excellence in customer service alongside prudent underwriting, a conservative investment strategy and the careful management of risk. We are trusted by the pension schemes of some of the UK’s best known companies to provide pension solutions, including British Airways, Cadbury, the Civil Aviation Authority, the Co-Operative, Morrisons, Smiths Industries and Telent.

At Rothesay, we are striving to transform our industry. We believe deeply in creating real security for the future and our leadership in finding new and better ways to do that is the key to our success. To do that, we need the very brightest original thinkers to bring creativity as well as rigour. Rothesay is a rewarding place to work, where quality people can thrive and prosper. We pride ourselves on the connections our people build, many of whom have been with us for over ten years.

The Team

The Business Engineering team develops and enhances systems used across the business, including the front office trading, middle office operations and actuarial functions. We work closely with our team of Strats (a.k.a. quantitative analysts), the broader Engineering team, Traders, Operations and Finance analysts to ensure smooth and efficient running of the Rothesay business and technology processes. We build new systems and support and enhance existing ones depending on the requirements of our clients.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the development of Natural Language Processing (NLP) models for document intelligence, including extraction of key information from unstructured text and document classification.
• Implement end-to-end machine learning solutions, from data annotation to model deployment, ensuring robust evaluation and performance monitoring in production.
• Develop and optimise NLP models using Amazon SageMaker and other AWS services, ensuring scalability and performance. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate AI solutions into business workflows and enhance automation of document processing tasks.
• Working with the business to identify and demonstrate where the application of machine learning techniques can drive future positive business outcomes in terms of business growth opportunities, improved control, and efficiencies.
• Engage with, and educate your colleagues, on key Data Science topics, AI trends and good risk management practices.

Required experience:

• 4+ years’ relevant experience in a Machine Learning / Data Science role in a commercial capacity
• Software Engineering experience (min. 3+ years Python commercial development experience)
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) experience
• NLP expertise (document classification, key information extraction from unstructured data, etc) and deep understanding of document intelligence techniques.
• Proficiency in developing and fine-tuning NLP models using Amazon SageMaker, with experience managing SageMaker pipelines.
• Strong understanding of deep learning and machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, transformers, NLTK, Hugging Face, or spaCy.
• Proven experience building end-to-end ML pipelines, including data annotation, data preprocessing, feature engineering, model training, and deployment.
• Ability to establish proper metrics and benchmarks to evaluate the performance and accuracy of NLP models in production environments.
• Excellent problem-solving skills, including the ability to analyse issues, issue root cause analysis, recommend solutions quickly, and structure / prioritise approaches for maximum impact.
• Team player with excellent communication skills

Desirable:

• Experience in information retrieval problems:
• Embedding generation using techniques like Word2Vec, TF-IDF, BERT, or custom-trained models to represent document features for retrieval tasks.
• Working with searchable databases (e.g., Elasticsearch) including indexing, querying, and optimising search performance.
• Knowledge of similarity search techniques, leveraging embeddings to perform semantic search, ranking documents, and retrieving the most relevant information efficiently.
• Ability to integrate NLP models and embeddings into search engines to enhance document intelligence solutions, ensuring accurate and scalable retrieval of key information.

Rothesay competencies

• Dedication to role – Motivated to provide an effective support service across all facets of role
• Team Player – Demonstrates evidence of being a strong team player, collaborates well with others and encourages other admin team members
• Communication – Ability to communicate what is relevant and important in a clear, constructive and concise manner
• Organised - Ability to work under pressure and prioritise workload in a fast paced environment. Ability to work autonomously with limited supervision
• Creative and innovative – Looks for ways to improve current processes and help develop creative solutions that have practical value for the admin team
• Judgement and Problem Solving – Proactive, sees the big picture and willing to be flexible to solve issues as they arise

Inclusion Rothesay actively promotes diversity and inclusivity. We know that our success depends on our people and that by nurturing a culture that values difference, we create a stronger, more dynamic business. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability or age.

Disclaimer This position description is intended to describe the duties most frequently performed by an individual in this position. It is not intended to be a complete list of assigned duties, but to describe a position level.  The role shall be performed within a professional office environment. Rothesay has health and safety polices that are available for all workers upon request.  There are no specific health risks associated with the role.