Full job descriptionContract 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 customers
*Building and refining recommendation and ranking models
*Working across ranking by destination, country, brand, park and individual property / unit level
*Running A/B tests and experiments to measure the impact of ranking changes
*Measuring performance against customer and commercial KPIs
*Analysing how factors such as price, brand, region and country affect sort order performance
*Building out a broader dashboard / KPI framework
*Working with behavioural and transactional data
*Feeding findings and recommendations back to product and business stakeholders
Essential experience:
*Hands-on experience with search ranking / search order / sort order
*Hands-on experience with recommendation / recommender systems
*Strong Python and SQL
*Snowflake
*AWS
*Strong A/B testing / experimentation
*Experience measuring ranking or recommendation changes against commercial KPIs
*Strong hands-on Data Science background
Nice to have:
*Learning-to-rank / re-ranking
*Metaflow
*XGBoost / LightGBM
*Propensity modelling
*Optimisation
*PyMC
*Streamlit
*Cold-start recommendation
*Travel, ecommerce, marketplace or booking-platform experience
Contract: 3-4 months
Rate: £480/day
IR35: Outside IR35
Location: Remote / Hybrid