Q&A with Aire’s Data Science Manager — Tom Turner
Tom Turner joined Aire in July 2016 as a Data Scientist. Here’s a quick snapshot of his work, and life beyond.
1. Coffee count so far today (11:09)
☕️ ☕️/ ☕️☕️☕️- made using Aire’s brand new coffee machine, of course.
Aire-time
2. What’s been your biggest accomplishment since joining Aire?
My biggest accomplishment has to be my first assigned project at Aire, something that has developed into our ongoing relationship with online retailer, N Brown. This has involved us taking a quantitative model built out of the information consumers tell us about themselves from conception, right the way through to a live production system actively helping thousands of consumers get fair, affordable access to credit. Not only that, but designing and building it as a product that we can deploy again and again to benefit different lenders. So it’s been at the apex of Aire’s product development and data science thinking.
More broadly, my last three years at Aire have really enabled me to flex my data scientist muscles, putting the theories and tools I’ve learnt into practice. Data science at Aire is pretty unique and that’s very much down to the way the team is structured. Here you work as part of a cross-functional team responsible for the whole end-to-end lifecycle of models, and this makes for a very rewarding and varied day-to-day. We also work with unique data sources, clean and controlled but also highly heterogeneous, making building and optimising models for live decisioning systems all the more interesting.
3. What uncomfortable forest* are you glad to have taken a walk in since arriving at Aire?
* At Aire, we’re not afraid to take the hard path. Even if it takes more time or creates more pain. We want to ensure we do it the right way.
Having spent seven years as an equity derivatives trader, joining Aire marked a huge career change for me. Trading was a role I found frustratingly unscientific and I was also keen to get into something more creative that tested a greater set of my skills. Always fascinated by programming and mathematical modelling, I knew I needed to make a pretty big change. Online courses, tech blogs and meet-ups fueled my interest further and it was at one of these events in London that I met Aire’s founder, Aneesh Varma.
A year later, I started at Aire on a one month internship — a little courtship to see how compatible we were — and I’ve never looked back! The last three years, from that perspective, have been a journey through a somewhat uncomfortable forest, constantly learning, testing and honing my skills and expertise, not just in terms of my data science toolkit, but also the softer skills of working well in agile teams, supporting the growth of team members and providing effective leadership. However, I’ve never felt lost or ill-equipped during that journey. We’re a team of explorers that’s for sure, and we don’t always have a clear map of where we’re going, but we’re always supporting and fighting for each other along the way.
4. What are you most looking forward to getting your teeth stuck into next at Aire?
As Aire’s Data Science Manager, I’m passionate about empowering our next set of data scientists to achieve all that they want to in their careers. I enjoy offering the support and influence our team needs to hone their skills here and enjoy the mentoring aspect of my role this offers me. The thrill for me of working at Aire is the ability to start with an idea, have the grit and determination to carry that idea through to implementation and to realise the importance this can have to the organisation — if I can inspire those I manage to do this, I’ll feel like I’ve done my job well.
5. What do you think the biggest change to the technology organisation has been in the last few months?
We’ve recently reviewed our squad structure to better reflect the needs of our customers. Rather than building components of a project, each squad now works towards a set of outcomes that are cross-functional, better aligning to Aire’s primary vision of lenders needing us and consumers loving us. By our squads operating in this way, not only will you see the development of a product through from initial research to production and deployment, but you’re forced to focus on the tangible value you’re delivering both to lenders and, just as importantly, to consumers.
Downtime
6. How do you stay up-to-date and keep your skills sharp?
Data science meet-ups on offer in London are often great, PyData in particular. But more broadly, an awareness of the context in which our work at Aire exists is crucial — I try to stay up to date with politics, current affairs and trends in tech and society, any of which have the ability to significantly impact on what we do.
7. What are you learning right now?
As I focus on building out a team, I’m really interested in understanding people’s individual strengths. I recently attended a School of Life course on leadership: identifying my own blind spots and how people’s gaps are inevitable consequences of the strengths they bring, was a real eye-opener. On the technical side of things, right now it’s building better software applications, clean modular design, and more efficient delivery of models from conception to production.
8. What are the podcasts/ blogs/ books you swear by?
Best blog for me hands down is Exponential View by Azeem Azhar. It’s more of a newsletter than a blog, but it’s packed full of astute observations and analysis on social and technological changes. Great to wake up to on a Sunday morning!
A recent book recommendation I enjoyed was Human Compatible by Stuart Russell — a fascinating read from a real AI heavy-weight that presents some ideas for ensuring that AI remains beneficial, not harmful, to humankind by essentially building uncertainty into the system’s idea of the value it’s trying to optimise. Uncertainty is also something we try to incorporate into our modelling at Aire, as well as developing a deep understanding of what drives our model outputs, ensuring that we can explain and justify them and avoid undue bias from creeping in. We see this as crucial to building a sustainable business that will truly benefit consumers in the long-term.
9. Any personal projects outside of work?
With the whole of London on Aire’s doorstep, I try to make the most of this vibrant, diverse city and the never-ending variety of culture to discover. And then I get as far away from it as possible by going climbing somewhere nice and remote! I also help out sometimes at an amazing charity called Shelter from the Storm, a London homeless shelter funded entirely by donations. Helping out there I often see first hand the impact on real people our current economic system has. It’s a powerful reminder of why our mission at Aire is so important.
