How to build a data science team 20115.03.13v6

Teralytics Pte. Ltd.

261 Waterloo Street #02-24

Singapore 180261

23.03.2015 Phone

E-Mail

Web

+65 9873 7882

[email protected]

www.teralytics.net

How to build a data science team

Confidential

Jardine OneSolution Big Data Seminar, 13th March 2015, Hong Kong

http://www.teralytics.net

2 23.03.2015 How to build a data science team

Teralytics provides insights on human behaviour on a global

scale in real-time

350 Million behavior profiles tracked

globally every day 180 Billion events processed in real-

time every day covering

location, demographics, web

traffic etc. Offices in

New York, Zurich and

Singapore with clients across four continents


Video


5

Answering questions from businesses and governments

• What is the mean and median distance residents take to travel from home to

work?

• How many people pass through the streets of Berlin and where do we place our

ads to reach our target segments most effectively?

• Which malls in Singapore have the highest number of visits from wealthy

female shoppers between the ages of 25 and 35?


We need to form a data science team as we ship data

products

Data Sources Human behavior data obtained from

location, consumption and financial

data

Powerful Analytics Anonymization, aggregation and

analytics based on state-of-the-art

algorithms in a secure environment

Data-as-a-Service Real-time and historic view of

actionable insights presented on a

beautiful web dashboard

Financial Data Payment Processors, Credit Cards,

POS

Consumption Data Browsing Activity, TV, Loyalty

Cards, CRM Data

Location Data Mobile Network, WiFi, GPS

What we build


This is what our customers buy and use


Data science team in Singapore builds one of the three

products that is deployed globally

Singapore


Is anyone in the room looking to build a data science team?

Data Tools

Data Scientists

Harvard Business Review: Data scientist:

the sexiest job of the 21st Century.


Don’t hunt for the unicorn!

Maths & Statistics

• Machine learning

• Statistical modelling

• Experiment design

• Bayesian interference

• Supervised learning: decisions trees,

random forest, logistic regression

• Unsupervised learning: clustering,

dimensionality reduction

• …

Domain Knowledge & Soft Skills

• Passionate about business

• Curious about data

• Influence over authority

• Hacker mindset

• Problem solver

• Strategic, proactive, creative,

innovative and collaborative

Programming & Database

• Computer science fundamentals

• Scripting language e.g. Python

• Statistical computing package e.g. R

• Database SQL and NoSQL

• Relational algebra

• Parallel databases and parallel query

processing

• MapReduce concepts

• …

Communication & Visualization

• Able to engage with senior

management

• Story telling skills

• Translate data-driven insights into

decisions and actions

• Visual art design

• …


Build a team!


Build a team with different, overlapping skills

Modelling

Software

Engineering

Data

engineering /

DevOps

Two other skills

missing here:

• Business analysis

(taken care by the

business team)

• Visualization

(taken care by

visualization team)

New York Times: For Big-Data

Scientists, 'Janitor Work' is

key hurdle to insights

Tech lead

1 1

1

2


Building the team

How to find

them?

How to

evaluate

them?

How to get

them to join

you?

How to get

them to work

together as a

team?


How do we find them? Headhunter was the most effective

• Worked with six

different headhunting

companies (no more BI

folks please!)

• One company placed

four out of six of the

team members

Schools Job

portals

Head hunters


Profile of the data science team in Singapore: no single

reservoir which you could recruit from

Nationalities Education Previous employers


How do we evaluate them? 5 stages of interview

First

interview

Take-home

test

Technical

interview

Co-

working

day

Reference

check

• Requires 12 man-hours in total from us

• Getting the team involved helps in integration of new hires

Two key benefits for candidates:

• They get to understand the work that they will be doing

• They get to interact with the colleagues they will be working with


How do we convince them to join you? Money is not

everything

• No need to be

high

• Pay sufficiently so

it is not a talking

point

Money? Team? Adventure?

• A-players like to

work with A-players

• Learn different

area of expertise

from other team

members

• Have access to a lot of

data / many different

forms of data

• Work on interesting

and practical

problems


How do you get them to work together as team? Burn them

in through a delivery

• Clear goal and hard deadline

• Burn them in

• Deliver quick wins for the company

Give them a

project

Co-locate, co-

work and

communicate

• Sit them in the same location

• Get the modellers to do some of the work of the software engineers /

data engineers

• Get the modellers to talk about their models in team presentations


How long does it take to build the team? It’s possible to ship

a product and build the team at the same time

Product

development

Hiring

Mar

2014

Jun

2014

Sep

2014 Oct

2014

Nov

2014

Dec

2014

1st data

scientist

hired

2nd data

scientist

(tech lead)

hired

3rd 4th 5th 6th data

scientist

hired

Start

development of

v1.0 of product

Shipped v1.0

of product


N = 1

This is my experience and I have only built one data science

team


Thank you!

Lin Zhihao

Head of Asia

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +65 (0) 9873 7882

Documents

How to build a data science team 20115.03.13v6