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