Lead Data Scientist

We’re looking for a Lead Data Scientist to help us build the scalable data models, technology and insights needed to transform millions of lives, by making high quality money advice affordable and accessible. This is an ideal opportunity for an ambitious self-starter to accelerate your development in a broad and varied role within a rapidly growing company.

About Octopus Money

At Octopus Money, we’re on a mission to make money advice accessible to all – because the right advice can turn your life dreams into reality.

The facts are alarming: half of Brits reach retirement age without enough money to live the life they want, financial stress is a leading cause of poor mental health and only 8% of us have access to 1-to-1 advice.

There’s plenty of information out there, but most of us just wish that someone we trust would tell us what to do with our money!

With Octopus, you get a personalised plan and a friendly expert to help you make it happen. We combine advisers, coaches and technology to understand your situation and recommend the right steps for your savings, investments, pensions and more. Then, we make it easy to invest in a custom portfolio, managed by experts.

We believe everyone deserves personal, 1-to-1 advice with their money.

The Lead Data Scientist will play a pivotal role in designing and building the models, tools and processes that move us beyond reporting into prediction and optimization, ensuring we deliver a world-class customer experience. As our first dedicated data science hire, the role has significant potential for progression and impact.

You will also play a key role in mentoring and developing our in-house analytics talent, helping them grow into data science careers. The ideal candidate will be able to chart their own path – whether that’s building out best-in-class machine learning capabilities, driving transformational insights, or evolving into a senior leadership role within data science.

• Partnering with teams across the business to scope, prioritize, and manage high-impact data science projects.
• Preparing and modeling data in our modern stack (Snowflake & DBT), as well as wrangling data from third-party APIs when needed.
• Conducting deep-dive analyses and running A/B tests to uncover insights, test hypotheses, and guide company strategy.
• Designing, training, and evaluating predictive models in Python, with flexibility to deploy within Snowflake, AWS, or both.
• Deploying models into production in simple, scalable ways, with monitoring to ensure long-term accuracy and business impact.
• Managing and mentoring 2 data scientists with varying degrees of knowledge and experience.

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in a data science role, with a track record of delivering end-to-end projects that have a measurable business impact
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with a proven ability to explain complex data science concepts and results to stakeholders with varying levels of data literacy
• Strong experience building, training, and validating machine learning models (e.g., using scikit-learn)
• Expert-level proficiency in Python (including structured, object-oriented code) and SQL
• A strong foundation in applied statistics, including hypothesis testing and experimental design (A/B testing)
• A deep interest in coaching and mentoring teams

• Hands-on experience with data transformation tools, preferably DBT
• Experience with a major cloud ML platform (AWS SageMaker or Snowflake preferred)

In return for your contribution we offer a base salary of £90,000 - £110,000 + benefits

Please note, as a regulated business we are required to run background checks for all employees which covers adverse financial and unspent convictions. These will only take place upon a successful job offer.

Octopus is a group of companies which invests in the people, ideas and industries that will help to change the world. We collectively believe that the companies serving two of our most important needs – our financial wellbeing and our planet’s future – are failing. We want everything we do, whether that’s in financial services or energy supply, to have a positive impact on the people it touches. The energy supply business - Octopus Energy is the #1 rated UK energy supply business, and the only one to be recommended by Which? three years in a row.

Make a difference: We’re on a mission to help millions of people improve their finances. Seeing the impact we can make on our client’s lives is deeply rewarding, and motivates the whole team to keep doing more to improve our service. Our client feedback is extremely positive, with a rating of 4.8 out of 5 on Vouchedfor.

Flexible working: We currently operate a hybrid model which is a mix of office and remote. You’ll have the option of working from home 2 days per week (Monday and Friday) with the remainder from our central London office in Holborn.

Work from anywhere: We give an 18 day work from anywhere allowance to swap out the on site days or take some time working from another country. NB - Due to compliance regulations this does not apply to individuals that give regulated financial advice.

Join a great team: We’re a diverse team with decades of experience in financial services and a proven track record. We believe in treating everyone with transparency and respect.

Rapidly grow your career: We believe in hiring people who are better than us, and giving them opportunities to achieve great things. As we continue to scale up, there will be opportunities for ambitious new joiners to demonstrate their skills and take on bigger roles.

Share incentive plan and team bonus: Being part of Octopus we benefit from the group share incentive plan. In addition, for those who are not commission based we offer a team bonus provided we meet our team goals.

Pension, enhanced parental leave, private medical insurance & other perks: As an Octopus Money employee you’ll get access to a company pension, enhanced parental leave, PMI, day off for your birthday and other benefits to make sure you’re healthy and happy, now and in the future!

We believe in equal financial education for everybody, no matter their background. We pride ourselves on building an inclusive working environment where diversity is celebrated.

We do not and never will discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. If you require support completing your application please contact Luke Stepney, Head of Talent at

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We are committed to providing a fair and accessible recruitment process. If you have a disability or long-term health condition, please let us know if there are any reasonable adjustments you may need to assist you with your application or during the interview stage.