PhD Internship - Data Science

The Tesco Data Science team are offering 12-week paid internships for PhD students within the team. The start date for each internship is flexible but must be between March and July 2022.

At Tesco the Data Science team focuses on solving complex business problems and developing data products that can be deployed at scale. Our work spans across multiple areas including physical stores, online, supply chain, marketing and Clubcard. This requires our Data Scientists to have an advanced understanding of statistics and algorithms. The team itself is made up of multi-disciplined researchers and practitioners with varied backgrounds from both academia and the business world.

We work on several domains and problem types and examples of our previous work include:

• Building search and recommender systems for our web portfolio
• Optimising space and range within our stores
• Optimising delivery routes for our vans
• Developing enhanced picking algorithms for our fulfilment centres
• Optimising online prices

• Analysing and linking complex datasets so that they may be learned from.
• Building algorithms and mathematical models on top of big data architectures to gain deep insights into opportunities to improve the customer experience and the Tesco business.
• Understanding difficult business problems and prototype solutions.
• Communicating complex solutions in a clear, understandable way to non-experts.

You are either a PhD student in your final or penultimate year (less than 1 to 1.5 years from expecting to finish) or a Postdoctoral Researcher with a strong numerical background and a strong desire to pursue a career in data science. You therefore tick the majority of the following points:

Programming Experience:

• Experience with different programming languages and good grasp of at least one language, ideally Python or Java.

Scientific/Technical Expertise:

•  Your PhD research is ideally in a highly numerate subject.

Our vision here at Tesco is to serve Britain’s shoppers a little better every day.

We want to become every customer's favourite way to shop, whether they are online or in our stores.

As one of the world’s largest retailers, Tesco has over 6,000 stores globally, successful online and digital businesses and a truly innovative culture. We operate in complex environments and with a volume of data few other companies have access to. We have embraced Data Science solutions full on, exploiting expert techniques to drive the business ambition of becoming a multi-channel leader and we are looking for curious individuals who want to make a mark and contribute to this ground breaking work.

If that sounds exciting, then we'd love to hear from you.

The position can be based in either our London or Welwyn Garden City offices.