Data Scientist

Hays Technology
London, United Kingdom
3 weeks ago
£600 – £1,000 pd

Salary

£600 – £1,000 pd

Posted
18 Apr 2026 (3 weeks ago)

Data Scientist - Operational & Optimisation-Focused AI

£700+ per day | Inside IR35 | Long-term programme (2-3 years)

I'm currently looking for Data Scientists to join a highly capable, collaborative team working on real operational problems at serious scale within a well‑established, commercially driven organisation.This is a role for someone who enjoys building things that actually run the business - not experiments that sit on a slide deck. You'll be working on postoptimization, decision‑making problems where the output of your models directly affects cost, performance, and customer outcomes every day.

Location & Contract

Rate: £700+ per day (Inside IR35, depending on experience)

Contract: Rolling 6‑month contracts, with a realistic 2-3 year roadmap of work

Working pattern: Hybrid - 2-3 days per week onsite in West London / Paddington area and West Drayton

Start: ASAP (subject to onboarding)

What the role is really about

In this role, you won't be siloed away from the business. You'll be embedded alongside engineers and operational stakeholders, working on problems where data science is central to how decisions are made, not just how performance is reported.You will:

Design and build optimisation, predictive, and prescriptive models that support live operational decision‑making

Work on problems where multiple constraints, trade‑offs, and dependencies matter (cost, service levels, experience, risk)

Take solutions from idea → model → production, and stay involved once they're live

Iterate based on real‑world performance and business feedback, not theoretical metrics

Explain why a model behaves as it does and help the business trust and use it

A good way to think about this role: you are shaping the engine that runs day‑to‑day operations, not creating insights for someone else to interpret later.

I'm particularly keen to speak to you if your background includes:

Hands‑on data science using Python, ML Frameworks and modern tooling

Experience with optimisation, simulation, machine learning, or advanced analytics applied to real systems

Clear examples of models you've personally built and put into production, not just prototyped

Working with engineers to deploy, monitor, and improve solutions over time

Operating in commercial, corporate environments where decisions have financial and operational consequences

Experience in supply chain, logistics, asset management, scheduling, or similar domains is useful - but what really matters is how you think about operational problems.

Why this role is worth a conversation

The work is meaty, operational, and genuinely impactful

You'll be surrounded by people who understand and value good data science

There's long‑term stability (not a short "fire‑and‑forget" contract)

You get to see your work run at scale, improve, and evolve

A quick but important note on CVs

This is a specialist role, and CVs that read as academic, R&D‑only, or proof‑of‑concept‑focused tend not to land well. Please make sure your CV clearly shows:

What you personally built

How it was used in production

What measurable impact it had on the business

CVs that make that clear tend to stand out very quickly. If you enjoy solving hard, real‑world problems and want your models to matter, I think this is well worth exploring.If you'd like to talk it through, I'd be very happy to have a conversation.

Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and employment business for the supply of temporary workers. By applying for this job you accept the T&C's, Privacy Policy and Disclaimers which can be found at (url removed)

Related Jobs

View all jobs

Data Scientist

Faculty AI London, United Kingdom
Hybrid

Data Scientist

Hays Technology London, United Kingdom
£600 – £1,000 pd

Data Scientist

ISR Recruitment Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom
£50,000 – £60,000 pa Hybrid

Data Scientist

Advertising Standard Authority Old Street, London, United Kingdom
£45,000 – £60,000 pa Hybrid

Data Scientist

Vallum Associates London, United Kingdom

Data Scientist

Randstad Technologies Recruitment London, United Kingdom

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Where to Advertise Data Science Jobs in the UK (2026 Guide)

Advertising data science jobs in the UK requires a different approach to most technical hiring. Data science spans a broad and often misunderstood spectrum — from statistical modelling and experimental design through to machine learning engineering, product analytics and AI research. The strongest candidates identify firmly with specific subdisciplines and are frustrated by adverts that conflate data scientist with data analyst, business intelligence developer or machine learning engineer. General job boards produce high application volumes for data roles but consistently fail to match specialist data science profiles with the right opportunities. This guide, published by DataScienceJobs.co.uk, covers where to advertise data science roles in the UK in 2026, how the main platforms compare, what employers should expect to pay, and what the data says about hiring across different role types.

Data Science Jobs UK 2026: What to Expect Over the Next 3 Years

Data science has spent the past decade being described as the sexiest job of the twenty-first century. By 2026, the reality is both more nuanced and more interesting than that label ever suggested. The discipline has matured, fragmented, deepened, and in some respects reinvented itself — and the jobs market has changed with it in ways that create genuine opportunity for those who understand what employers actually want, and genuine difficulty for those still operating on assumptions formed five years ago. The data science jobs market of 2026 is not simply a larger version of what it was three years ago. The generalist data scientist — equally comfortable wrangling data, building models, and presenting insights to the board — is giving way to a more specialised landscape where employers know exactly what problem they are trying to solve and are looking for candidates with the specific depth to solve it. Machine learning engineering, causal inference, experimentation, AI product development, and domain-specific applied science have all emerged as distinct career tracks within what was previously a single, loosely defined profession. At the same time, the arrival of large language models and the broader AI capability wave has both threatened and created data science roles in equal measure. Some of the work that junior data scientists spent their early careers doing — data cleaning, exploratory analysis, basic model building — is being partially automated by AI tooling. But the demand for practitioners who can evaluate AI systems rigorously, apply statistical thinking to complex business problems, and build the data foundations on which AI depends has grown considerably. The candidates who will thrive over the next three years are those who understand where the discipline is heading — which specialisms are attracting the most investment, which technologies are reshaping what data scientists are expected to build and know, and how to position a data science career that will remain valuable as the field continues to evolve around them. This article breaks down what the UK data science jobs market is likely to look like through to 2028 — covering the titles emerging right now, the technologies driving employer demand, the skills that will matter most, and how to position your career ahead of the curve.

New Data Science Employers to Watch in 2026: UK and International Companies Leading Analytics and AI Innovation

Data science has emerged as one of the most transformative forces across industries, turning raw information into actionable insights, predictive models, and AI-powered solutions. In 2026, the UK is witnessing a surge in organisations where data science is not just a support function but the core of their products and services. For professionals exploring opportunities on www.DataScience-Jobs.co.uk , identifying these employers early can provide a competitive advantage in a market with high demand for advanced analytics and machine learning expertise. This article highlights new and high-growth data science employers to watch in 2026, focusing on UK startups, scale-ups, and global firms expanding their data science operations locally. All of the companies included have recently raised investment, won high-profile contracts, or significantly scaled their analytics teams.