Contract Data Scientist - Search Ranking Recommendation

Contract Data Scientist - Search Order / Ranking / Recommendation £480/day | Outside IR35 | 3-4 months | Remote / Hybrid I'm working with a major consumer travel business looking to bring in a hands-on Data Scientist to support a project focused specifically on search order, ranking and recommendation. The business manages a large inventory of holiday properties, and the core problem is deciding which properties should appear, in what order, for a given customer search. This is not a generic Data Science role. Previous experience with search ranking / sort order / recommendation systems is essential. The role will involve:

• Improving the search order / ranking logic used to surface properties to customers
• Building and refining recommendation and ranking models
• Working across ranking by destination, country, brand, park and individual property / unit level
• Running A/B tests and experiments to measure the impact of ranking changes
• Measuring performance against customer and commercial KPIs
• Analysing how factors such as price, brand, region and country affect sort order performance
• Building out a broader dashboard / KPI framework
• Working with behavioural and transactional data
• Feeding findings and recommendations back to product and business stakeholders Essential experience:
• Hands-on experience with search ranking / search order / sort order
• Hands-on experience with recommendation / recommender systems
• Strong Python and SQL
• Snowflake
• AWS
• Strong A/B testing / experimentation
• Experience measuring ranking or recommendation changes against commercial KPIs
• Strong hands-on Data Science background Nice to have:
• Learning-to-rank / re-ranking
• Metaflow
• XGBoost / LightGBM
• Propensity modelling
• Optimisation
• PyMC
• Streamlit
• Cold-start recommendation
• Travel, ecommerce, marketplace or booking-platform experience Contract: 3-4 months Rate: £480/day IR35: Outside IR35 Location: Remote / Hybrid Desired Skills and Experience Strong hands-on Python and SQL Experience building search ranking, sort-order or recommendation systems Experience with learning-to-rank, re-ranking or personalisation Strong Snowflake and AWS experience Experience working with large-scale behavioural and transactional data Strong A/B testing and experimentation background Able to measure model changes against commercial KPIs Experience building dashboards / KPI frameworks and feeding findings back to stakeholders Comfortable working as a hands-on individual contributor across the full Data Science lifecycle Ideally experience within travel, ecommerce, marketplaces, booking platforms or other consumer businesses