Jon Howells
Verified Expert in Engineering
Data Scientist and Software Developer
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since May 15, 2020
Jon has been the lead data scientist at one of the world's largest technology consultancies for several years, with experience managing large data science and engineering teams and developing data strategies and product roadmaps. He has a strong leadership and communication style and a solid academic and technical background, with an MSc in Machine Learning from University College London. Jon has led large, complex engagements across the education, consumer goods, retail, and public sectors.
Portfolio
Experience
- Python - 10 years
- Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT) - 8 years
- Machine Learning - 8 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 8 years
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) - 8 years
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - 5 years
- CTO - 2 years
Preferred Environment
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python, Team Leadership, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Agile, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Natural Language Processing (NLP), PyTorch
The most amazing...
...thing I've done is lead a large team of data scientists, engineers, business analysts and testers, to develop production AI solutions used in over 20 countries.
Work Experience
AI Director
Qualifai
- Developed an advanced LLM-driven market research application, including question-answering qualitative survey analysis. This used a fine-tuned GPT-4 and retrieval augmentation (RAG) to extract insights from over one million transcribed user videos.
- Led the development of a social listening tool utilizing state-of-the-art LLMs to analyze millions of social posts across Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram, enabling the identification of emerging consumer trends in the consumer goods sector.
- Spearheaded an AI development project with Permira, a global private equity firm, to create an internal LLM-based application that streamlines processes, enhances decision-making, and improves overall operational efficiency.
Lead Data Scientist
Capgemini
- Developed NLP solutions to understand consumer feedback and identify trends from product reviews, social media, and consumer complaints data. These solutions used GPT-3 and open source Transformer models, such as BERT using Hugging Face and PyTorch.
- Managed a large data science and engineering team at a global consumer goods company. Set up two new data analytics teams in India, Poland, and Mexico with over 40 employees. The role involved recruitment, training, and onboarding of these teams.
- Worked with several clients to develop their data strategies and product roadmaps and carry out data science maturity assessments.
- Led a team to develop a machine learning solution for a large government department to prioritize and streamline complex visa applications, saving the department time, effort and money by reducing the strain on the case-working process.
- Led the development of a new solution to monitor emerging consumer trends across multiple geographies, utilizing natural language processing and time series modeling techniques.
- Set up a global data science community at a multinational client with over 30 analysts across ten countries.
- Delivered a forecasting project for one of the largest fast-food restaurants in the world, forecasting menu item sales across all restaurants in the United States and using univariate and multivariate time series models, including ARIMA and AR-Net.
Senior Data Scientist
Capgemini
- Led the development of a public relations alerting system using natural language processing and time series analysis techniques to alert the leadership for some of the world's largest consumer brands.
- Managed team-building, industrialized NLP tools for hundreds of users at a large consumer brand company.
- Supervised a team developing data science reports and dashboards to respond to market research briefs, using social, search, and eCommerce reviews data.
Data Analytics Consultant
KPMG
- Led team building statistical models in Python and R for a UK retail bank covering pricing optimization, customer churn, customer cross-sell, and financial investigations.
- Analyzed interest rate swaps data and contracts as part of an investigation into LIBOR fixing.
- Worked with KTrace, a forensic data analysis methodology used to detect anomalies in data known to indicate potential fraud and misconduct.
- Analyzed security transactions via the stock exchange daily official list (SEDOL) numbers to identify indirect tax savings.
- Reviewed SQL data warehousing solutions to identify customers affected by mortgage overpayment, mortgage underpayment, and deceased customers.
- Worked with the National Health Service regulating body Monitor to assess models on patient service costs.
Data Scientist
Rightmove
- Developed machine learning models to predict new property sales using a range of internal and external data for a SaaS company in the proptech sector. The company was acquired by the UK's largest property website RightMove.
- Created a web application presenting custom analytics around employee health tracking.
- Analyzed a large client email database for a real estate company using natural language processing.
Experience
COVID.txt
https://github.com/jonhowellsAI/covid-txtDeployed as a Dash app using Docker on AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) using AWS FARGATE.
Consumer Trends Monitoring
The data product harnessed social data and search data using natural language processing and time series analysis to identify emerging consumer trends.
The solution covered multiple geographies and languages, including the US, the UK, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and South Africa, alongside multiple verticals, including personal care, foods and refreshments, and home care.
This was used to inform new product development and product enhancement. As a result of the insights, a number of new products were developed or enhanced for some of the largest consumer goods brands (e.g., Dove, Magnum, Ben & Jerry's).
Public Relations Alert System
Private Equity LLM
http://www.permira.comEducation
Master of Science Degree in Computational Statistics and Machine Learning
University College London - London, UK
Master of Science Degree in Physics
Imperial College London - London, UK
Certifications
Natural Language Processing Specialisation
deeplearning.ai
AWS Machine Learning Specialisation
Amazon Web Services
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Amazon Web Services
Dataiku Certification
Dataiku
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Pandas, SciPy, OpenNLP, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, NumPy, PySpark, Spark ML, SpaCy, DeepSpeed, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), Keras
Tools
ChatGPT, Azure OpenAI Service, Claude, Azure Machine Learning, Jira, Microsoft Power BI, Git
Languages
Python, Python 3, SQL, JavaScript, Snowflake, TypeScript, C#
Paradigms
Rapid Prototyping, Agile
Platforms
Dataiku, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Jupyter Notebook, Azure AI Studio, Together.ai, AWS Lambda, Kubernetes, Azure Functions, Azure, Docker
Storage
PostgreSQL, Data Pipelines, SQL Functions, Redshift, Neo4j, Graph Databases, Azure Cosmos DB
Frameworks
Flask
Industry Expertise
Project Management
Other
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, Data, Big Data, Text Analytics, Data Preprocessing, Machine Learning, Forecasting, Modeling, Data Analysis, Regression Modeling, Statistical Analysis, Consumer Products, Analytics, Leadership, Planning, Business Technology, Data Analytics, Predictive Modeling, Language Models, Deep Learning, Algorithms, Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), Hugging Face, Text Generation, APIs, Large Language Models (LLMs), OpenAI GPT-4 API, Model Development, Prompt Engineering, OpenAI, Data Engineering, Open-source LLMs, Embeddings from Language Models (ELMo), Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), OpenAI GPT-3 API, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Document Parsing, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Vectorization, AI Agents, Natural Language Processing (NLP), SaaS, CTO, Team Leadership, Solution Architecture, Custom BERT, Statistics, Computer Vision, Statistical Modeling, Data Visualization, Predictive Analytics, Text Recognition, Object Detection, Fine-tuning, Neural Networks, Speech Recognition, Chatbots, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Back-end Development, Semantic Search, LangChain, Azure AI Custom Vision, Full-stack Development, Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), Recommendation Systems, Computational Statistics, Physics, Causal Inference, FastAPI
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