Role: Data Scientist
Location: Hybrid (UK based) – remote with Manchester office attendance once/twice a month
This role is for a Machine Learning Data Scientist to join our new and expanding data science team. They will be a key part of a new exploratory project and ‘startup-like’ team, with ample opportunity to shape the technical direction of their workstreams. This priority project, reporting directly to the executive team, is aiming to develop and implement Natural Language Processing and Large Language Model based tools across the business, with a long-term vision of developing products which can be taken to the wider legal sector.
The role:
We are looking for a Data Scientist to work within our Data Science team to build and maintain efficient and scalable Machine Learning (ML) pipelines. They will build ML tools for a range of sector-specific challenges, initially focussing on using NLP, LLMs, and classification tools for text interpretation and automation of legal tasks. This role will work closely with the data science, engineering and infrastructure teams and will have ample opportunity to influence the technical direction of their projects.
In this role, you should be highly analytical, well versed in analysis, maths and statistics. You will be asked to produce maintainable code and work in a professional development environment (albeit within a small team). We would like to see a passion for research in ML and ML application, especially around text and language (speech-to-text & Large Language Models).
Employee benefits as part of Fletchers Solicitors:
- A bonus scheme paid yearly (subject to targets being met)
- Pension scheme with salary sacrifice option
- Life Assurance Policy
- Medicash policy to cover some dental, optical, and other medical expenses, along with discounts on travel, cinema, electronics, home and groceries.
- 35 days holiday a year including bank holidays and Christmas Closure, you also have an option to purchase up to 3 extra days holiday per year
- Long service award: 3 days extra holidays after your 5th, 7th, and 9th full year of employment.
- Company sick, maternity, paternity and IVF pay scheme.
- Flexible, agile working environment with a positive work-life balance
- Varied calendar of funded company social events
About Fletchers Solicitors & the Data team:
Fletchers is a rapidly growing law firm specialising in personal injury and clinical negligence law. Over the last three years, we have had a small but successful data science project developing and implementing a decision-support neural network, and now are building our data science team and capabilities. This small but growing team will be tasked with developing and deploying a range of ML tools within our firm, with the potential to commercialise these to the wider industry in the future. By leveraging the wealth of legal-medical data that Fletchers has, and the funding provided by our Private Equity owners, we will further develop our sector-specific ML tools. Our initial focus is on NLP tools for supporting or automating legal tasks, and decision-support systems, which we are developing through an experimental project that reports directly to the executive team.
We are based in the North-West of the UK, with offices in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds & Southport, although many of our colleagues work primarily from home. Our existing AI project team is spread across Cambridge, London, Manchester, Preston and usually meets once per month in our Manchester or Liverpool office.
Main responsibilities:
- Understand business challenges and propose technical solutions, with support from the team
- Explore and experiment with different ML techniques, to analyse results and make technical recommendations
- Build pipelines to train and validate task-specific ML models
- Process a range of data to create maintainable datasets for ML applications
- Monitor and iteratively improve models
- Analyse data and present information to technical teams
- Collaborate with engineering, infrastructure, and product development teams
- Contribute to production of ensemble models that have higher-level or more complex objectives
Requirements:
- Strong maths fundamentals, e.g. statistics, linear algebra, optimisation
- MSc or Masters in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science or relevant field
- 1-3 years’ industry experience as a Data Scientist or Machine Learning Engineer/Researcher
- Proficiency in Python
- Good understanding of core principles and fundamentals of ML algorithms
- Previous experience with LLMs and/or NLP, or demonstrated ability to grasp this quickly
- Based in the UK (Although the role can be primarily remote, we like to have in-person meetings around once a month)
- Desirable: Experience with data mining & interpreting unstructured text data
- Desirable: Knowledge of SQL
- Desirable: Previous experience working in cloud environments (even better if Azure)
We have a fast ‘launch’ agenda, so reserve the right to close this role before the date specified depending on the calibre and volume of candidates.