Senior Data Scientist in Manchester

The Senior Data Scientist turns complex and often loosely defined business questions into clear, actionable insight. The role leads high-value analytical work using Python, SQL, statistical methods and appropriate machine-learning techniques to explain what is happening, understand why it is happening and assess what may happen next. The jobholder combines analytical rigour with commercial judgement, stakeholder engagement and strong written communication, ensuring that analysis results in practical business decisions.

The kind of person we are looking for:

• Curious, commercially minded and highly analytical.
• Comfortable working in Python, SQL and statistical models.
• Able to clarify uncertain questions with senior stakeholders.
• Capable of explaining the “so what?” in plain language.
• Creates clarity from ambiguity, works at pace and turns analysis into decisions.

Competence, knowledge and skills

Essential:

• Significant experience as a Data Analyst, Senior Data Analyst, Data Scientist, Insight Analyst or equivalent analytical professional.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to create clarity from ambiguous business questions.
• Advanced Python skills for data analysis and modelling, together with strong SQL capability.
• Practical experience applying statistical and data-science techniques to business problems, including several of forecasting, regression, classification, segmentation and propensity modelling.
• Sound understanding of statistical concepts, model evaluation, uncertainty, bias and the limitations of analytical approaches.
• Experience working with large or complex datasets and performing data discovery, validation and exploratory analysis.
• Excellent requirements-gathering, stakeholder-management and project-planning skills.
• Excellent written communication, with experience producing analytical papers or recommendations for senior audiences.
• Ability to translate complex analysis into concise conclusions, commercial implications and practical actions.
• Ability to iterate quickly, prioritise effectively and provide useful initial answers without waiting for perfectly defined requirements.

Desirable:

• Experience with time-series techniques such as ARIMA, exponential smoothing or related forecasting methods.
• Experience developing customer churn, lifetime value, propensity, anomaly-detection or segmentation models.
• Experience analysing financial, operational, customer or risk data.
• Experience using machine-learning techniques beyond traditional statistical analysis.
• Experience with Snowflake or another cloud data platform, Streamlit, and Power BI.
• Experience in financial services or another regulated, data-rich environment.

About AJ Bell:

At AJ Bell, we believe investing should feel good. Whether you're looking for an ISA, pension or dealing account, whether you want to invest with the help of a financial adviser or do it yourself, we have easy-to-use solutions to suit people from all walks of life. We're one of the UK's fastest-growing investment platform businesses, trusted by everyone from professional financial advisers to first-time investors. Today, over 762,000 customers trust us to manage more than 121.5 billion of assets. By continually striving to make investing simpler and more accessible, we're helping more people take control of their financial futures. We're proud to be recognised as one of the UK's Best 100 Companies to Work For for six consecutive years, and a Great Place to Work in 2025 and 2026, a reflection of our supportive and collaborative culture.

What we offer:

• 26 days holiday, increasing with service, plus buy/sell scheme and bank holidays.
• 7% pension with matched contributions.
• Discretionary bonus scheme.
• Share schemes, including free shares and BAYE.
• Health Cash Plan and discounted private healthcare.
• Free onsite gym.
• Enhanced family leave, subject to qualifying criteria.
• Travel and bike loan schemes.
• Employee Assistance Programme.

Life at AJ Bell:

• Regular social events including summer and Christmas parties.
• Learning and development opportunities tailored to you.
• Casual dress code.
• Friendly, supportive team environment.

Our ways of working:

At AJ Bell, our people are the heart of our culture. We believe in building strong connections by working together. That's why we offer a hybrid working model, where you'll spend a minimum of 50% of working time per month in the office. For new team members, an initial period will be spent full-time in the office to help you immerse yourself in our business and build valuable relationships with your colleagues.

Inclusion & diversity:

We’re committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels respected, supported and able to be themselves at work. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and make hiring decisions based on skills, experience and potential.

Agency information:

This vacancy is being managed exclusively by our in-house Recruitment team. We are not partnering with recruitment agencies on this opportunity and will only accept applications submitted directly by candidates.