A coffee with Kieran Billingham, Trainee Data Scientist at GoCompare

Last year the GoFurther Academy teamed up with the Welsh Contact Centre Forum to help educate the next generation of data scientists. The Data Science Graduate Programme sees two new students join GoCompare’s HQ in Newport every eight months over two years, starting from October 2018.

We sat down with Kieran Billingham to find out more about the data science programme, his motivations for getting into data science and what he's been up to since joining GoCompare.

What spiked your interest in data science?

My final-year project for my degree was in fluid mechanics and computational physics and so relied on the creation and processing of a huge amount of data. While finishing up this project, I realised that the most satisfying part about having all that data was pulling out the valuable information from the noise and creating insight (and pretty pictures).

I decided that I would look to study an MSc in data science, which would help commercialise my numerate skills and teach me the fundamentals to allow me to access this ‘sexy’ career. The Welsh Data Science Graduate Programme allows me to undertake 3 rotations at leading businesses in South Wales whilst studying for a funded MSc in applied data science.

You've joined GoCo for your second rotation, where did you go for your first rotation?

I spent my first rotation within Admiral’s Business Analytics team and learned so much about the financial services industry as well as the value of analytics within a business. I was fortunate enough to work on a project that aimed to improve customer experience and ease the workload on staff.

When I got the news that I would be spending my second rotation at Go Compare as part of the GoFurther Academy I was thrilled! At scheme events, Jon and Solveiga always showed lots of enthusiasm for mentoring talent and so I knew I would be well supported to learn new things and push myself.

How are you settling into GoCompare?

Everyone I have met here has been so friendly and the office is a great place to come to work every day (I am a huge fan of the coffee points)! It has been great to join a business where great tech and people are such a priority. In my first two months, I have been busy learning new python skills and planning my project. Having access to Pluralsight’s great courses have really helped with this.

Now, I am learning how to use Spark and Databricks, and I will soon be starting the project that will keep me busy until I leave at the end of January next year. For anybody else wanting to start learning about Spark and cluster-computing frameworks, I recommend ‘Spark – The Definitive Guide’ by Chambers. B and Zaharia. M, it’s proven invaluable to me!

Over the next few months, I can’t wait to meet more people, improve my (frankly terrible) table football skills, and get stuck into my project.