Head of Data Science

Hi, we’re Bloom & Wild. Founded in 2013, our mission back then was to make sending and receiving flowers the joy that it should be, by harnessing technology, brand and letterbox delivery. Together, we’ve fulfilled over 20 million deliveries (and counting!), making us the largest direct to consumer flower business in Europe.

We announced £75 million Series D funding in 2021 and that same year acquired bloomon in The Netherlands and Bergamotte in France. Now home to a family of 3 beautiful brands, we're expanding our gifting offering to other categories like cakes, candles and cocktails. This is all part of our ambition to build Europe's #1 direct to consumer gifting destination. 

⚙️Technology at Bloom & Wild

Our Technology team of over 60 people sits right at the heart of our business. We build and maintain the solutions that power e-commerce, production and fulfilment, enabling our brands to delight our customers every day. 

The Engineering team is  six, cross-functional, Product Engineering squads, who each own their own business and architectural domain and are supported by our Platform, Architecture, Data and IT teams.

Our platform uses technologies including Ruby and Rails and Python/ React, backed by PostgreSQL, Fargate/ECS on AWS, and Cloud Run on GCP. It exposes APIs that are used by our multi-brand Angular webapp and our native iOS and Android mobile apps.  We’re also looking at developing new domain driven services & microservices where applicable.

Most of our team is based in the UK or The Netherlands and works in a flexible model, with choice in how often they travel to the office. Our squads meet all in person at least once per quarter in order to maintain connections, collaborate on larger projects and have fun together.

You can read lots more about our technology stack and our culture over on our tech blog - Code Wild

Data Science at Bloom & Wild

With millions of customers and hundreds of thousands of monthly transactions, we have a large and growing dataset. Bloom & Wild’s Data Science team focuses on end-to-end development of machine learning solutions that utilise this data.. We currently have several ML models in production, from recommendation and discounting to forecasting engines, and an ambitious roadmap for upcoming work.

💻 What you’ll be doing

Leading and mentoring a small, talented Data Science team ensuring that they are learning and developing the skills required to grow our organisational capability in Data. Collaborating with Product Management to identify opportunities to apply machine learning and data science across the Bloom & Wild group to drive growth and profitability.  Building deep and close collaborative working relationships with internal stakeholders across all functions to discover opportunities where data science can provide new business capabilities or powerful customer experiences. Overseeing the development and deployment of machine learning models, owning the process  from model selection and training, through to evaluation and optimisation, all the way to production. Partnering with the Data Engineering team to source data that you need from across our estate of systems and third-party suppliers. Being a part of our supportive, high-trust, no blame engineering culture as you learn more, and grow your career, within Bloom & Wild Engineering. Reporting directly into the CTO, and playing an active role in the Technical Leadership team. Evangelising the use of Data Science internally within the business.

✅ You’ll love this role if you… (What excites us)

Enjoy taking the initiative and thinking strategically to find innovative ways to apply data science that drives business value.  Enjoy leading a team while also doing some hands-on technical work. Are proficient with Python and SQL. Have experience selecting, training and deploying machine learning models in production. Excellent communication skills with both technical and non technical audiences. Like to take a collaborative, data-driven and experimental approach to solving complex problems, and are able to demonstrate the ability to foster this mindset in your colleagues. Are keen to learn and stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and value sharing your knowledge with your peers. Experience with AWS tools and technologies. Experience working on an e-commerce site or in a fast-growing (preferably consumer-facing) start-up.

🌟 (some of) The good stuff

To care wildly for our customers, firstly we care wildly for our teams. We work hard to craft a culture of thoughtfulness and care, where there is a strong sense of inclusion and belonging, enabling all of our people to thrive and be successful each day.

🌻 Work that works for you

- Flexible working : our core hours are 10-4, but outside of these hours you can start or finish your day when works best for you

- Work Abroad for up to 30 days each year 

- Share in our success with a choice to take equity options

- Enhanced family leave policy and a workplace nursery scheme

- 1 day per year to volunteer on a project that’s close to your heart

🌴 Time off

-25 days’ holiday + your birthday and bank holidays each year

- Flexible bank holidays - trade a bank holiday for another day that fits your beliefs, values and celebration calendar

- Option to buy an extra 5 days’ holiday each year

🌱 Health and wellbeing

- Health cash plan through Simplyhealth

- Company pension scheme

- Mental health support through Open Up, including access to online therapy sessions

- Allies and champions groups

- Mental Health First Aiders and awareness training for our managers 

- In person or virtual yoga every week

- Cycle to work scheme

- Our office kitchen is stocked with drinks and snacks to keep you going

- Financial wellbeing support through Bippit

- Electric car scheme

🌳 Growth & Development

- A flexible training framework for every stage of your career development through our Bloom & Learn programme

- Access to the Goodhabitz learning platform

- Mentee and mentor opportunities with our external partners, such as The Women's Association and Mentoring for Growth run by Future FoundersInternal & external Speaker Sessions on a variety of different inspirational topics 

💐 Moments that matter

- Social & wellbeing monthly calendar

- Summer and End of Year events, team lunches and post-peak celebrations

- Irresistible discounts on our products, blooms & subscriptions!

🏡 Belonging at Bloom & Wild

- We know that we learn through our differences, and building a diverse team has always been central to creating the best experience for our customers.  We value all backgrounds, perspectives, ideas and experiences, and encourage everyone to share their opinions openly within our caring and inclusive team.  Our champions community actively advances our culture of inclusion and belonging, which is organised around 8 pillars of diversity. These cross-business networks offer additional opportunities for connection, education, support and celebration, and ensure that inclusivity continues to be embedded in our ways of working.  

🫱‍🫲 Getting hired

We’ll do everything we can to make sure your interview experience with us is a good one. It’s a 2-way process, and we’re keen to answer all of the questions you may have, so that you can be sure (and excited!) that we’ll be the right place for you.  

- Apply below (it takes 2 minutes!)

- Chat with Billy, our Senior Talent Manager for tech - to discuss our role and learn a bit more about your skills and background and how we might match your career & development goals.

- Interview with Steve, our CTO to get into more of the detail.

- Interview with Tonci, Head of Data Engineering.

- Show us how you work through a technical challenge, with some members from the product team.

- Chat with the current data science team members.

We believe in leading change for good, so if there’s anything that we can do to help throughout your application process, or if you have any feedback, please share this with us anonymously here so we can use this to improve your experience.