Senior Data Scientist

Job Description:

Job Title: Senior Data Scientist

Job Grade: C15

Salary:  £48,200.00 DOE and location + Fantastic benefits
Location status: Hybrid (flexible working options available) 3 days WFH
Location: Bupa Place, Salford – Willow House, Staines – Angel Court, London

Permanent/fixed term contract: Permanent 
 

About the Role

We Make Health Happen

At Bupa, we're harnessing the power of data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to transform healthcare and insurance for our customers. We're looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join our Applied AI team and play a leading role in delivering innovative, data-driven solutions across our UK Insurance operations and healthcare management functions.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced data scientist who combines deep technical expertise with strong commercial awareness. You'll work with large, complex datasets, including claims, pre-authorisation and service interaction data, helping to uncover insights, develop predictive models and deliver AI solutions that make a tangible impact on our business and customers.

You'll also be a key advocate for Applied AI across the organisation, helping to shape opportunities, influence strategy and develop future talent.

What You'll Be Doing

As a Senior Data Scientist, you'll take ownership of projects from concept through to business delivery, combining advanced analytics, machine learning and AI to solve complex business challenges.

Key responsibilities include:

• Designing, building and deploying machine learning models and AI solutions across the full lifecycle, from data preparation and model development through to deployment, monitoring and optimisation.
• Delivering actionable insights from complex healthcare and insurance datasets, presenting findings to stakeholders at all levels, including senior leadership.
• Leading projects from initial problem definition through to implementation and business adoption.
• Building and maintaining robust MLOps frameworks, governance processes and best practices.
• Partnering with IT architects, platform teams and solution designers to ensure cloud environments support analytical and AI workloads.
• Conducting ad hoc analysis using large-scale datasets including claims, pre-authorisation and customer service data.
• Developing and maintaining strong stakeholder relationships across the business.
• Coaching and mentoring junior team members and potentially supporting summer interns.
• Championing coding standards, quality assurance and analytical best practice.
• Working within Agile teams where appropriate.
• Ensuring all work complies with regulatory requirements and maintains the highest standards of data security and governance.
• Supporting the development of Generative AI solutions, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), semantic search, agentic workflows and LLM orchestration.
• Contributing thought leadership in Data Science, Machine Learning, AI and Generative AI to help position UK Insurance Data & Analytics as a centre of excellence.

What We're Looking For

We're seeking a highly analytical and commercially minded professional with a passion for turning data into meaningful outcomes.

Essential Skills and Experience

• Proven experience delivering end-to-end machine learning solutions, including model development, deployment, monitoring and continuous improvement.
• Experience implementing MLOps frameworks and operationalising machine learning at scale.
• Strong track record of generating actionable insights from data, ideally within healthcare, insurance or another regulated industry.
• Hands-on expertise with supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques, including:
  • XGBoost
  • LightGBM
  • Random Forests
  • Clustering techniques
  • Regression analysis
  • Correlation analysis
  • Multilevel modelling
• Strong programming and data engineering skills using Python, SQL and/or SAS.
• Experience building automated machine learning pipelines and working with large enterprise data environments.
• Strong experience with the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, including:
  • Azure Machine Learning
  • Azure AI Studio
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
  • MLOps and model monitoring capabilities
• Experience developing Generative AI solutions using Azure AI Foundry, OpenAI technologies or Google Vertex AI.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence and engage stakeholders at all levels.
• Demonstrated experience coaching, mentoring and developing colleagues.
• Experience working within Agile delivery environments, using tools such as Azure DevOps.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Experience with advanced Generative AI and Agentic AI solutions, including:
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • Embeddings and vector search
  • Evaluation frameworks
  • LLM orchestration
• Hands-on experience with frameworks such as:
  • LangChain
  • LlamaIndex
  • CrewAI
  • AutoGen
  • Google ADK
  • Similar AI frameworks
• Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science or another quantitative discipline.
• Master's degree in Data Science, Statistics, Epidemiology or a related field.

About You

You'll be someone who:

• Thrives on solving complex business problems using data.
• Can independently lead projects from concept through to implementation.
• Balances technical excellence with commercial impact.
• Communicates complex analytical concepts in a clear and engaging way.
• Builds strong relationships across technical and non-technical teams.
• Enjoys mentoring and supporting the development of others.
• Has a genuine passion for the future of AI and data science.

Benefits

Our benefits are designed to make health happen for our people. Viva is our global wellbeing programme and includes all aspects of our health – from mental and physical, to financial, social, and environmental wellbeing. We support flexible working and have a range of family friendly benefits.

Joining Bupa in this role you will receive the following benefits and more:

• 25 days holiday, increasing through length of service, with option to buy or sell

• Bupa health insurance as a benefit in kind

• An enhanced pension plan and life insurance

• Annual performance-based bonus

• Onsite gyms or local discounts where no onsite gym available

• Various other benefits and online discounts

Why Bupa?

We’re a health insurer and provider. With no shareholders, our customers are our focus. Our people are all driven by the same purpose – helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives and making a better world. We make health happen by being brave, caring and responsible in everything we do.

We encourage all of our people to “Be you at Bupa”, we champion diversity, and we understand the importance of our people representing the communities and customers we serve.  That’s why we especially encourage applications from people with diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Bupa is a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer. This means we aim to offer an interview/assessment to every disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria for the role. We’ll make sure you are treated fairly and offer reasonable adjustments as part of our recruitment process to anyone that needs them. 

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