Senior / Principal Data Scientist AI & Data Strategy
Compass Group Internal Audit
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Level |
Senior / Principal Data Scientist |
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Location |
Chertsey head office |
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Working pattern |
Hybrid — typically around 3 days a week on-site, with the flexibility to work from home |
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Reports to |
Group Director of Risk and Internal Audit |
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Travel |
Occasional international travel |
Compass Group
Compass Group is a FTSE 20 and Fortune Global 500 business — the world’s leading contract catering, hospitality and support services provider. We operate in over 20 countries, across more than 50,000 client locations, serving over 5.5 billion meals a year. Food is our passion. Increasingly, data and AI are how we protect it, sharpen it and stay ahead.
The opportunity
We’re reinventing how Internal Audit works — moving from sampling and hindsight to data-led, continuous, forward-looking assurance. This is a rare chance to help build that capability from the ground up, not just run it. You’ll sit in a small, high-profile Group team with a direct line of sight to the very top of a FTSE 20, and the autonomy to make a real mark.
What you’ll do
- Help shape and deliver Internal Audit’s AI and data strategy — and bring it to life.
- Build machine learning and AI models that turn full data populations into sharper, earlier risk insight.
- Hunt out fraud, error and control gaps with anomaly detection — across 100% of the data, not just samples.
- Stand up the pipelines, dashboards and tooling that power continuous auditing across the whole audit lifecycle.
- Bring auditors on the journey — coaching, training and raising data literacy across the team.
- Help us assure how the business itself uses AI — model risk, fairness, transparency and governance.
- Be our voice on what ‘good’ looks like, benchmarking against the best in the industry.
What you’ll bring
- A quantitative mind and a track record of shipping analytics, ML or AI solutions in the real world.
- Fluency in Python or R and SQL, and BI tools such as Power BI.
- Hands-on machine learning, statistical modelling and AI — plus the judgement to use them responsibly.
- Comfort with modern cloud and data platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP or Snowflake) and building data pipelines.
- The rare knack of explaining the technical simply — and influencing senior stakeholders.
- Curiosity about risk, processes and controls (internal audit experience welcome, but not essential).
- A data, analytics or audit certification (e.g. CISA, CIA) is a bonus, not a must.
Why join us
- Build a capability, don’t just maintain one — genuine scope to innovate.
- Small, high-profile team with visibility at the most senior levels of a global business.
- The backing, data and autonomy to do work that actually changes how we operate.
- Hybrid working and the flexibility to balance time in the office and at home.
- Career pathways across Internal Audit and the wider global business.
Internal