About this role
Contract Data Scientist - Search Order / Ranking / Recommendation £480/day | Outside IR35 | 3-4 months | Remote / Hybrid
I'm working with a major consumer travel business looking to bring in a hands-on Data Scientist to support a project focused specifically on search order, ranking and recommendation.
The business manages a large inventory of holiday properties, and the core problem is deciding which properties should appear, in what order, for a given customer search.
This is not a generic Data Science role. Previous experience with search ranking / sort order / recommendation systems is essential.
The role will involve:
Improving the search order / ranking logic used to surface properties to customersBuilding and refining recommendation and ranking modelsWorking across ranking by destination, country, brand, park and individual property / unit levelRunning A/B tests and experiments to measure the impact of ranking changesMeasuring performance against customer and commercial KPIsAnalysing how factors such as price, brand, region and country affect sort order performanceBuilding out a broader dashboard / KPI frameworkWorking with behavioural and transactional dataFeeding findings and recommendations back to product and business stakeholders Essential experience:
Hands-on experience with search ranking / search order / sort orderHands-on experience with recommendation / recommender systemsStrong Python and SQLSnowflakeAWSStrong A/B testing / experimentationExperience measuring ranking or recommendation changes against commercial KPIsStrong hands-on Data Science background Nice to have:
Learning-to-rank / re-rankingMetaflowXGBoost / LightGBMPropensity modellingOptimisationPyMCStreamlitCold-start recommendationTravel, ecommerce, marketplace or booking-platform experience Contract: 3-4 months Rate: £480/day IR35: Outside IR35 Location: Remote / Hybrid