CBA hits go on data science expansion

The Commonwealth Bank is set to expand its burgeoning data science practice with a new 2IC and a fresh batch of systems and software engineers to keep its Hadoop cluster humming.

Less than six months after appointing Amy Shi-Nash as its head of data science, the bank is now recruiting for a “data science lead” as a direct report to Shi-Nash.

The data science lead will act as a line manager to “20+” data scientists, according to a recruitment advertisement.

They will also assume responsibility for the “data science agenda and roadmap, develop state of the art machine learning algorithms and advanced analytics capabilities, and apply at large scale in production".

In addition, they are expected to provide data science input into “double-digit million-dollar projects” across the bank.

The search for a 2IC comes in the same week as the bank launched a recruitment “campaign” for multiple systems and software engineers to maintain and develop the technology underpinning its data science.

“We need systems engineers with a solid Linux background and recent experience of large scale cluster operations,” CBA said, noting it particularly wanted people that knew Hadoop and Docker.

“Our data scientists carry out analysis with Python and R, all running on Hadoop,” CBA said. “Our systems engineers make it work and keep it working, correctly and fast.”

CBA CIO David Whiteing said in May that open source infrastructure technologies would play a greater role in the bank’s enterprise services strategy.

A CBA spokesperson was unable to comment due to a blackout period ahead of the bank’s full year results announcement next month.