Company Description

Sika is a specialty chemicals company with a globally leading position in the development and production of systems and products for bonding, sealing, damping, reinforcing, and protection in the building sector and automotive industry. Sika has subsidiaries in 103 countries around the world and, in over 400 factories, produces innovative technologies for customers worldwide. In doing so, it plays a crucial role in enabling the transformation of the construction and vehicle industries toward greater environmental compatibility. With more than 33,000 employees, the company generated sales of CHF 11.2 billion in 2023.

Job Description

Sika Data Science is a young and growing division of Sika UK. Having begun as an arm of the UK R&D department, it has rapidly developed into a team that works on a much larger and more diverse scale: ranging from using traditional data science techniques to optimise the efficiency of operations and monitoring product quality and consistency, to harnessing the power of state-of-the-art AI solutions to identify novel construction materials and service Sika global with LLM technologies. The objectives of the team have evolved equally rapidly: we now aim to use data science to improve the productivity and sustainability of every Sika department. 

Purpose of the Role

The UK Data Science team has been called upon by corporate to fulfil larger data science functions, contributing significantly to the global digitalisation strategy. Our team has led the way in Sika’s AI journey, and which has now come to form one of the key pillars of our global strategy. Now we are aiming to develop our data science team, with this particular role focusing on providing AI-powered solutions for Sika corporate and our global subsidiaries.

The Opportunity:  

• You will develop deep learning computer vision algorithms to analyse images of materials important to Sika, including particulates and surfaces.
• You will train and deploy machine learning and deep learning models on tabular data to predict the properties of and optimise our product catalogues.
• You will deploy large language model-powered solutions in Microsoft Azure that will be used by Sika Global, including product recommendation and internal search interfaces.

The Rewards:

You will be rewarded with a competitive salary, and a sweep of great benefits. We pride ourselves on our total reward package:

• Bonus Scheme
• Holiday 25 days rising to 28 days with service, plus bank holidays
• Hybrid Working
• Core Hours Working
• A company pension contribution of up to 10%
• Private healthcare for you, with option to add family
• Group life cover at 6 × your annual salary
• Global Income Protection (PHI)
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay
• Staff discount platform & Cycle to Work scheme
• Dedicated Service Awards for reaching key milestones
• Selected discounted Sika products

The Support:

As this role requires a deep knowledge of Sika’s internal working processes, both in R&D and infrastructure, you will be trained in these processes with full support from our existing team. We are a small team who prioritise satisfaction and excellence in our work, and we will do our utmost to ensure that you are content in your role, accommodating for your needs. We aim to foster an honest and democratic culture, where all voices are equally important, and everyone is treated with respect.

The Skills:

This role requires a significant commitment to professional and personal development from day one. You will be required to turn your skills to a wide variety of data and AI problems from across all departments and disciplines at Sika, from molecular R&D to customer interactions. You must be hungry to learn and eager to expand both your technical and interpersonal skillsets, focusing on the nuances and individual needs of the spectrum of projects on which you will work. You’ll need a keen nose for where data science can be harnessed to drive productivity, both in the small and large scales, and how you can personally contribute to those objectives.

The Future: 

Potential Career Routes: Head Machine Learning Engineer, Data Science Manager

The opportunity to progress within a global company across a variety of business areas.

Qualifications

• A portfolio of tuned and deployed tabular machine learning models.
• Prowess in developing deep learning projects in PyTorch, especially focused on computer vision.
• Strong interest in harnessing data for scientific purposes, with an ability to read scientific literature.
• Good understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Experience in the Azure infrastructure and retrieval-augmented generation is appreciated