SVGC Staff Profiles
At SVGC we’re proud to be a small business formed of experienced, highly qualified people operating on a national platform.
Our team collectively has vast knowledge of strategic planning, public sector decisions, innovative technologies, data science and agile working methodologies. Get to know our newest recruit Paige Bunker, Junior Data Scientist.
What are your ‘must haves’ to start the working day?
Definitely a cup of tea and something toasted with marmite & butter. I also like to read the news & twitter to wake myself up and catch up with the world.
What’s your proudest work achievement to date?
A data science algorithm I built for my previous employer was officially published internally. The algorithm was used to determine representative customer use types for more realistic product analytics and testing. It had a big impact and was used for multiple programmes, saving millions of $ in testing.
I also presented at the SWE Europe International Conference. This required me to really push myself out of my comfort zone and present to a large audience from multiple companies.
What do you love most about what you do?
I love seeing the effect data science has on real world problems and how powerful and useful it can be in so many applications.
I also found a love for coding over the last few years, I could create new scripts and debug them all day. The combination of continually learning new functions & libraries and trying to make them work with the data science algorithms and analysis is a great challenge.
Overall I love problem solving, data science provides the method but coding is also part of creating the solution.
What does your typical working day look like?
I start the day by going through any unread emails, then I’ll either go straight into picking up a critical task I was working on the previous day or I’ll check my ‘to do’ list. I generally like to pick tasks depending on how many continuous hours of free time I have (without meetings/calls) as once I get stuck into a more complicated task I like to keep focus on it until I complete it or reach a good stopping point.
When you hit a wall, what do you do to help overcome it?
It always depends on the type of problem. If it’s a code that I can’t debug, sometimes it’s best to leave it and come back with fresh eyes the next day. When it’s a problem that is project direction specific I’ll always reach out to others for their thoughts. Sometimes the issue can be solved through research, so I’ll spend some time scouring the internet for alternative options and people with similar problems to my own.
