The Interview

The Group’s management quickly realised the potential of applying machine learning to logistics and manufacturing, and greenlighted the growth of the Data Science team."

Q: Tell us about yourself

A: "My name is Julia Massabuau, and I run the data science team at Unipart. After completing my PhD, I became the first data scientist hired by Unipart. The Group’s management quickly realised the potential of applying machine learning to logistics and manufacturing, and greenlighted the growth of the Data Science team."

Q: What does your typical day look like?

A: "As a manager, I spend a lot of time communicating with stakeholders, including internal and external clients to understand business problems and solution requirements, as well as with the team members to participate in technical discussions and provide direction. I also help communicate what data science can do for the company at various internal conferences and by publishing blog posts.

Being in charge of project delivery as well as strategy and vision for the team, I have little time to do hands-on coding. We, however, run weekly workshops where we teach our junior members relevant data science techniques and web-app development tools, discussing machine learning algorithms and their applicability to our business."  

Q: Could you tell us a bit about Unipart?

A: "Unipart Group brings together manufacturing, logistics, and consultancy in a set of products and services that create imaginative solutions for our customers.

Our roots are in manufacturing within the automotive sector – but our history has required us to reinvent ourselves, several times, in order to maintain a competitive advantage. The principles of The Unipart Way have played a crucial role in the Group’s success and empowerment of its employees.

Unipart has taken on the challenge of Industry 4.0 very seriously. This commitment informs many current projects that revolve around automation of our warehouses and manufacturing sites, capturing events and real-time measurements from sensors and taking advantage of data to build machine learning - enhanced predictive or optimisation solutions."

"We value a candidate’s potential more than their experience."

Q: What skills/competencies do you typically look for in a candidate applying for a Data Science-related role?

A: "Generally, we look for people with a quantitative background and some coding skills. Our positions range from internships to more senior levels, so do the requirements to the candidate’s experience and technical skillset. 

Having a software development background would make it easier to transition into machine learning engineer positions while having experience with databases could help you become a data engineer supporting data science pipelines and the back-end. These technical roles are as important as pure data scientist positions occupied with developing algorithms, for example, in a Jupyter notebook, since they help port those models into production.

"We value a candidate’s potential more than their experience. We are usually happy to train someone, so we provide internships and opportunities for junior developers."

Q: Tell us about the Unipart culture 

A: "We try to find people who could be a good fit for our culture. We run our team in an almost academic, R&D fashion where one is quite flexible in his or her ways of working to pursue creative ideas but also delivers high-quality work. Many of the Digital team members work remotely. This is only successful when the individual is fully engaged in the project and with the rest of the team.

We frequently gather together to celebrate achievements, announcements, birthdays and simply Fridays! :)"

Q: What does the hiring process look like and what level of preparation do you expect from a candidate?

A: "Initially, we have a brief phone conversation with the candidate to make sure our goals are aligned. We then offer a technical test to complete at home in a candidate’s own time. If successful, the candidate is invited to our Cambridge office for a face-to-face interview."

"We would be interested in the candidate's experience with the most recent versions of python, and any data science related libraries."

Q: What are the types of questions a Data Science candidate can expect?

A: "We assess the candidate’s ability for logical reasoning and programming knowledge by going over their exercise solutions. We could also ask about any particular hands-on experience that the candidate may have in the relevant areas of expertise. Additionally, we could show them a piece of code and ask to explain what the code does, or spot any errors and explain how grave they may be. We would be interested in the candidate’s experience with the most recent versions of python, and any data science related libraries. 

Of course, we will also ask what candidate’s preferences and aspirations are, to make sure we are a good fit for them too."

Q: Final question, are you hiring at the moment?

A: "Unipart Digital are always on the lookout for data scientists with Machine Learning experience, Python Developers, back-end/data engineers, system administrators, and front-end developers. If you would like to inquire about job vacancies, connect with Julia Massabuau on LinkedIn and mention this blog.