#49 Becoming a Kaggle Competition Master with Valeriy Babushkin – Head of Data Science, Kaggle Competition Master (Top 60)

Valeriy Babushkin is the Head of Data Science at X5 Retail Group where he leads a team of 50+ people (4 departments: Machine Learning, Data Analysis, Computer Vision, R&D) and increases profit in a 25+ billion USD company. Also, Valeriy is a Kaggle competition master; ranking globally in the top 60.

In this episode, Valeriy explains his background and how he started in the data science field. At one point, he received an offer for a senior position at a bank; it was the largest privately owned bank at that time in Russia. Valeriy did not find out that he was doing machine learning until working on it for two years. What someone is doing right now could be pretty close to machine learning, and they don't even know. Then, Valeriy speaks on how trust is essential to the job of a data scientist; not only between you and your boss but between you and other departments. Trust will make your job easier when explaining the data, the results, and how reliable they are for the company. However, if there is an existing data science department in the company, you will not have to work as hard to earn the trust of others because it already exists. Sometimes when data scientists join a company, they think their job will just be to code all day. That is not always the case, you will have to talk to many people and often be a business analyst. 

Enjoy the show!

We speak about:

[01:45] How Valeriy started in the data space  [06:10] Transiting to working at a bank [11:30] Understanding the business process  [15:10] Gaining trust from clients  [20:20] Data scientists are business analysts  [24:10] Expectations from the job interview  [25:50] Starting data science teams [31:40] The type of mindsets to look for in a team member  [37:30] Different teams complement each other  [40:20] Valeriy’s journey with Kaggle [47:40] Ethical challenges in the industry  [51:20] Persistence is key

Resources:

Valeriy’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/venheads/

Valeriy’s Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/venheads

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