Presented By O’Reilly and Cloudera
Make Data Work
21–22 May 2018: Training
22–24 May 2018: Tutorials & Conference
London, UK

Scaling data science (teams and technologies)

David Asboth (Cox Automotive Data Solutions), Shaun McGirr (Cox Automotive Data Solutions)
14:5515:35 Thursday, 24 May 2018
Average rating: ****.
(4.60, 5 ratings)

Who is this presentation for?

  • Data scientists, particularly those embedded in traditional organizations

What you'll learn

  • Learn how the data science team at Cox was created and scaled

Description

Cox Automotive Data Solutions’s mission is to transform the way the world buys, sells, and owns vehicles using data. As the world’s largest automotive service organization, Cox can combine data from across the entire vehicle lifecycle and is on a journey to turn this data into insights. David Asboth and Shaun McGirr share their experience building up a data science team at Cox and scaling the company’s data science process from laptop to Hadoop cluster.

Topics include:

  • How to find the optimum niche for a data science team within a traditional organization
  • The role of a data scientist
  • How data science at Cox is different from data science at other organizations
  • The skills that make a good data scientist
  • How Cox moved from laptop-based analysis to big data analysis on Hadoop
  • How the company managed the trade-off between productivity and learning new technologies
  • How to separate R&D from production (by focusing on their separate requirements, tools, etc.)
  • How Cox uses software engineering best practices and automation to make its data scientists’ lives easier
Photo of David Asboth

David Asboth

Cox Automotive Data Solutions

David Asboth is a data scientist at Cox Automotive Data Solutions, where he spends his days creating value from messy and incomplete data. Previously, he was a software developer. David holds an MSc in data science.

Photo of Shaun McGirr

Shaun McGirr

Cox Automotive Data Solutions

Shaun McGirr is the lead data scientist at Cox Automotive Data Solutions, where he spends most days developing new data products for the automotive industry. Shaun has been working with data in one way or another for about 15 years. He holds a PhD from the University of Michigan.