Our new developers were able to hit the ground running, we've worked with them for over two years now, and they are truly part of our team.
Alison WhittleProduct Delivery Manager, BladeFSIn-house feel, nearshore
Data Scientists
Most British companies are rich in data and short of people who can turn it into a decision the board will act on. We embed data scientists who run experiments, build models and put findings in front of the people who need them, working your hours inside your team, at 50 to 75% less than the comparable British hire.
- Statistics, experimentation and pipelines ready for ML
- Focused on the metrics your business actually runs on
- Working alongside your PMs, analysts and engineers daily
PythonPandasNumPydbtBigQuery
Our Service
Vetted for rigour and the nerve to say the data is thin
The most valuable thing a data scientist can tell you is sometimes that the experiment proves nothing yet. We vet for that honesty alongside technical depth, through CTO-led assessment, live pairing and a psychometric screen built for engineers. AI tooling has made analysis fast, so the differentiator now is knowing which questions deserve the analysis.
- Matched to your data stack, domain and open questions
- A/B testing, modelling and insight work that stands up to scrutiny
- Comfortable presenting to stakeholders from product to exec
From Data to Direction
Scientists who find the decision hiding in the numbers
- Exploratory AnalysisMine and profile large datasets to uncover product opportunities.
- Predictive ModelingUse regression, classification, or clustering to guide features and strategy.
- ExperimentationDesign and analyze A/B, multivariate, and quasi experiments.
- Data VisualizationCommunicate insights through clear dashboards and storytelling.
- Cross-Team CollaborationAlign with product, marketing, engineering & exec teams.
- Decision SupportHelp prioritize features and roadmap based on quant evidence.
Tools That Power Your Data
Python, SQL, dashboards and the pipeline in between, matched
Technology coverage
From your front end to your back end, we've got your stack handled.
Frequently placed for Data ScientistsVetting
You see two people - not 200 CVs.
Engineers vet engineers
A senior engineer runs a live technical conversation on the candidate's real stack, not a recruiter working from a keyword list.
Live coding, not take-homes
Real problems solved in front of an assessor, with anti-cheating checks. You see how they actually work, not what they submitted overnight.
A full profile, not a CV
Every candidate arrives with a CV, interview summary, coding-test breakdown and rate in pounds. You decide on evidence.
Every tab is a stage a candidate has to clear. Six of them, all run by our own internal engineers at Cloud Employee, before you see a name.
- Overview
- CV
- Tech interview
- Coding test
- Psychometric
- Soft skills
Scored by people. We use AI to cross-check our own consistency - never to decide who reaches your shortlist.
✓Luka M.
VettedSenior Data Engineer · Python · dbt · BigQuery · 6 yrs · Zagreb, Croatia (GMT+1)
Assessment
Six years in production Python, the last three on LLM systems - retrieval pipelines, eval suites, and agent tooling for UK fintech. Owns delivery end to end.
Stack
Python · LangGraph
English
C1 fluent
Overlap
8 hrs UK
Notice
2 weeks
AI in practiceShips with Copilot and Claude Code daily, and rewrote 40% of the generated code in his observed task - the judgement is his, the tooling only makes him faster.
Career history
2023 - now
Senior AI Engineer
UK payments platform · 40-person product team
Built the retrieval assistant now resolving 30% of tier-1 tickets; owns its eval suite and guardrails.
2020 - 2023
Backend Engineer, Python
Travel booking SaaS · Zagreb
Moved fraud scoring onto a real-time feature pipeline; cut false declines by 18%.
2019 - 2020
Data Engineer
Agency · Python, Postgres, AWS
- Python
- FastAPI
- LangGraph
- pgvector
- Evals & tracing
- AWS
- Docker
Technical interview
Assessed by Marco R., Principal Engineer
12 Jun 2026
55 min · live call
"Walked me through an assistant that was quietly hallucinating refund policy, how he caught it in evals, and what he got wrong on the first fix. Hire-ready for a senior seat."
Live coding test
Repair a slow ingest pipeline
88
score
Tests passed
21 / 21
Time used
62 of 90 min
Anti-cheat flags
0
retrieval.py · submitted diff
- hits = index.query(q, k=50)+ hits = index.query(rewrite(q), k=50, filter=tenant)+ hits = rerank(hits, q)[:8] # recall 0.62 -> 0.91+ assert_context_budget(hits, max_tokens=6000)
Psychometric · technical thinking
How he reasons under a real deadline - not a personality quiz.
Top 9%of engineers
we test
A 45-minute reasoning test, scored against the 4,000+ engineers we have already placed. Our assessors do the marking - AI only flags where our own scoring looks inconsistent.
Soft skills · working with your team
Spoken English
C1 · assessed on call
References
2 of 2 verified
"He raised the payment edge case nobody else had spotted, in writing, two days before release."
This is what you receive - not a CV.
Ask our AI anythingWhy Cloud Employee?
Analytical depth without the recruitment slog
Hiring data scientists in the UK is slow and dear, and judging their work is hard without one already on staff, which is the trap. Our CTO-led vetting solves the judgement problem, interviews start within 7 working days, and the engagement is a single monthly fee on a rolling contract with 30 days notice, with a two-week money-back guarantee behind it.
- Aligned to your technology, team and commercial goals
- Full-time employees of ours, 97% staying beyond two years
- Managed setup, HR and a UK-based client success manager
Backed to Go Deep
Payroll, kit and HR handled, insight and impact left to them
Fully supported
We handle the rest so your engineers can focus on building.
Performance reviews
Payroll & complianceEquipment
WorkspaceIn-house, without the friction
No upfront fees. No lock-in contracts.
- No placement or upfront fees
- Rolling 30-day contract, cancel anytime
- One monthly rate, everything included
Ready to find your engineer?
Tell us exactly who you need.
In 90 seconds
Two matched engineers in 7 days. No fees, no obligation.
Any particular stack?
Optional. Search anything, and add it if it is not listed.
Popular right now
- Founded in 2014
- 97% stay 2+ years
- Replace if it isn't working
Got questions?
The questions CTOs and founders ask.
01How much does it cost to hire a data scientist in the UK?
Usually between 50 and 75% below the full cost of a comparable British hire, once salary, employer national insurance, pension, recruitment fees and overheads are all counted. UK-based data scientists are part of what we place, so that option is genuinely open. In practice most clients land in Eastern Europe, the Philippines or Latin America once they see the same calibre for materially less, and Eastern Europe fits a British working day almost exactly.
02What does a data scientist actually do, and why do teams hire one?
A data scientist turns raw data into decisions you can defend, using statistics, machine learning and experimentation rather than instinct. Teams hire one when they have real questions buried in real data, such as which customers will churn, what a price change will do, or whether a product change worked. The role sits apart from analytics engineering, which builds the pipes, and from dashboarding, which reports what happened. A good data scientist tells you why it happened and what will happen next, with honest error bars.
03What skills should I look for in a data scientist now?
Look for statistical judgement first, strong SQL and Python second, and scepticism about their own results throughout. AI assistants now write competent pandas and scikit-learn boilerplate, so the ability to type a model no longer separates candidates, but the ability to spot leakage, confounding and a broken evaluation does. Systems thinking matters, meaning they understand where the data comes from, how it will drift, and how the model output feeds a real decision. Communication is not optional, because a finding nobody understands changes nothing.
04How do I assess a data scientist, and what should I ask?
Assess them on a messy, realistic dataset and on how they reason, not on textbook definitions. Give them data with duplicates, gaps and a subtle leak, and watch whether they find it before modelling. Ask them to describe a model that failed in production and what they changed, because candidates without a failure story usually lack production experience. Let them use AI tools during the exercise, then probe how they verified what the assistant produced, since that verification habit is what protects you later.
05Are data scientists in demand, and is the role worth investing in?
Yes, demand remains strong, but the role is changing shape, and it is only worth it if you have the data and the decisions to feed it. Generative AI has pulled hiring toward machine learning and LLM engineering, yet the core need, someone who can reason carefully about evidence, has not gone anywhere and is harder to automate than the coding around it. If your pipelines are unreliable, a data engineer should come first. If you mainly need reporting, an analyst is cheaper and faster to value.
06Do your developers use AI tools, and how do you know the code is sound?
Yes, our data scientists use AI assistants, and we check the soundness the same way good teams always have, through review, testing and evaluation against held-out data. We treat AI tooling as part of the craft now, so during vetting we assess whether a candidate uses it well, meaning they verify generated code, test edge cases and never paste output they cannot explain. In data science the risk is subtle, because plausible-looking analysis can be quietly wrong, so we weight statistical checking habits heavily.
07How does Cloud Employee vet data scientists?
Vetting is CTO-led rather than recruiter-driven, which matters in a field where a polished CV can hide weak fundamentals. Every candidate passes a technical assessment, a live pair programming session with a senior engineer, a cultural fit screen and a psychometric assessment we built specifically for software engineers. For data scientists the pairing session leans on real data problems, so reasoning shows up rather than rehearsed answers. We use AI ourselves to screen and match across candidate data, but a human makes every hiring decision, the same standard we hold candidates to.
08How quickly can a developer start, and how does the engagement work?
You are typically interviewing matched candidates within 7 working days of a requirements call, and developers are often embedded and pushing code within about two weeks. From there it is a rolling monthly contract with 30 days' notice, one monthly fee, and no placement charges. You can scale up or down as the work changes, and you pay nothing to interview.
09What happens if the developer is not the right fit?
There is a two-week money-back guarantee, and if you want to continue we replace the developer free of charge. In practice this rarely comes up, because you interview a shortlist of two candidates who have already passed a CTO-led technical assessment and a live pair programming session, so the fit question is largely settled before anyone starts.
Proof, not promises
Hear from our customers
In their words
What the difference feels like
Alison WhittleProduct Delivery Manager, BladeFSWhat I love about Cloud Employee is that you have taken all of that hard work off my shoulders.
Marcus KilgourCTO, Salmon SoftwareWorking with Cloud Employee developers is great, because they're not afraid to push back. They're proactive, they're positive, and they feel like part of the team.
Doran EskinaziHead of Engineering, HealthpointeWe actually hired the whole team remotely, having never met them. And we made a bunch of really good hires.
Euan CameronCEO, WilloCloud Employee provides a level of professionalism, communication and support we haven't found elsewhere.
Trevor SathorManaging Director, Square EyeWorking in tandem with Cloud Employee we have successfully released a major version of our main software product during a critical period for us.
James StringerManaging Director, CleanLink