Data Science at Enigma
I’m often asked what it’s like to be a Data Scientist at Enigma and how it might differ from Data Scientist roles at other companies. Having been here for about ten months, I’d say it’s unique for a few reasons.
Between Two Roles
The Data Scientist role at Enigma lies between two main types of Data Scientist positions you usually come across:
- Working at a large company where you have a defined problem, are able to request more data, and have a devoted team of data engineers to maintain a data pipeline.
- Working on a consultancy basis to provide a specific analytical solution in the form of either a model or modeling approach.
At Enigma, we’re dealing with problems that can’t be solved in-house at a company, and most of the time we can’t count on additional data or support from the organization. Similar to a consultancy, our solutions have to be self-contained, but we also have to be able to plug in to a company’s existing engineering framework and infrastructure.
It’s been our philosophy not to disrupt how a company is delivering or managing their data and we will do what we can to fit within their existing production pipelines, which obviously presents a different set of challenges.
Working in Ambiguity
As a Data Scientist at Enigma, you also have to be comfortable working in ambiguity. Because we work with other companies’ data, models sometimes need to live on in perpetuity, but other times we might maintain a partnership with the organization that allows continued development.
If the solutions we deliver do need to ‘live’ on their own, it means we need to know the life cycle of a model and envision how things will look in several months, which might be the earliest chance to make extensive changes to our models.
Each Day is Different
No day is the same at Enigma — at any given moment, you might be offsite at a meeting with a client to hear about a specific problem, at the office dealing with actual production data, working with fellow Data Scientists and Engineers, or talking through what next steps need to be taken in order to come up with a better model.
In the end, what’s most unique about being a Data Scientist at Enigma is probably that you really get a chance to use every part of the data science brain. People here push themselves — we’re all focused on coming up with the best, most robust solution possible, which makes it the kind of work that’s easy to be proud of.
It’s been an exciting and challenging role so far, and I look forward to seeing what the next ten months bring.
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If you’re interested in learning more about the work we do or want to join the team, we’re hiring!
Originally published at www.enigma.com on August 29, 2018.
