Looking back on 4 years in data science

Department of Statistics

Jonny Brooks-Bartlett, Senior machine learning engineer at Spotify, gives a talk on his experiences as a data scientist and as machine learning engineer in top rated companies around the world. It's been almost 4 years since I left academia to work as a data scientist in industry. In that time I've worked in several teams at a couple of companies. I've also spoken to many other data scientists and consulted literature to get a better picture of the current landscape. In this presentation I take you on my journey from the point at which I decided to become a data scientist to now becoming a senior machine learning engineer at a global music streaming service, Spotify. I'll describe the projects I've worked on and do a bit of a deep dive into a ranking system that I built whilst working at Deliveroo. Finally I'll discuss some observations that I have about data science in general that I hope will give a better idea about how data science works in industry and how it differs from what one might do in an academic setting. Brief bio: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett is a senior machine learning engineer at Spotify working on improving the search experience for customers. Outside of work Jonny is a keen science communicator delivering public talks on science maths and AI. He also enjoys sports and taking part in functional fitness competitions