Director of Data Science (Private Equity Fund)

A Pan-European, mid-market Private Equity firm is looking for their first Internal data & more specifically Data Science hire to support value creation across the entire portfolio & identify investment opportunities before competitors in the market. You will lead & shape this role & work closely with a fund that has the ambition to create one of that lead Data Science functions in the market. You will have the support of the fund to instantly invest in your internal team, scaling to 10 data scientists from scratch within the first 12 months.

There will be innovation opportunity, equity/carry, global travel & some remote work where required although on-site visits with investments with be a requirement.

• Create and further develop positive communication & visibility between the fund & portfolios with all things related to data & data science
• Lead data diligence on potential investments & acquisitions
• Create a platform & implement data science techniques such as web-scraping that will identify potential fund investments or portfolio acquisitions
• Lead projects that optimise that usage of data science models, including clustering, decision trees, random forest, regression, categorization modelling, structural equations.
• Initially pilot into different portfolio businesses to assess the quality of data & data science functions & their effectiveness at leveraging value from available data
• Modernise & expand BI & data science teams to add value for portfolio businesses
• Implement training for data science delivery & value creation across the portfolio
• Leverage strong stakeholder management skills & understanding of private equity to get buy in from investors internally & the portfolio C-Suite
• Create automated links between the fund & portfolio that enables real-time monitoring of performance
• Lead & initiate projects including price optimisation, purchasing processes & purchasing decisions
• Support the selection of tech-stacks & help with the implementation projects when relevant
• Drive world class portfolio reporting across all functions including sales, marketing, finance etc.
• Ensure that the quality of dashboards is to a high-standard & that the relevant KPI metrics are being tracked and leveraged effectively
• Work collaboratively with the portfolios to create short, medium & long term roadmaps for growing the data functions to improve efficiencies & create value
• You will have complete autonomy over hiring, how you spend your time on portfolio projects & where you are located
• Hire a team to support delivery on projects that will likely include Heads of Data, Data Engineers, analysts & scientists.
• Identify areas for portfolio hires & support the interview processes
• Support portfolios gearing up for exit to optimise the potential multiple & avoid potential problems before they occur

• Exceptional Python/R skills
• Top university/education in a STEM degree with a minimum of a masters/PhD
• The credibility to review the work of stand-out data scientists
• Private Equity / Consultancy experience
• Clear value creation deliverables
• Exceptional communication skills & stakeholder management expertise.