At SVGC we’re proud to be a small business formed of experienced, highly qualified people operating on a national platform.
Tom Middleton is a Junior Data Scientist at SVGC Digital, having joined full-time after completing a 15-month Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Loughborough University. He works on research and development, bringing innovative data science solutions from experimentation into production.
What’s your role at SVGC and what’s your background?
After completing a 15-month Knowledge Transfer Partnership between SVGC and Loughborough University, I joined the Data Science team full-time. I now focus on pulling my Research & Development work through into production, turning experimental ideas into real-world solutions.
What are your ‘must haves’ to start the working day?
A hot shower, an ice-cold Monster, and my earbuds on full blast.
What’s your proudest work achievement to date?
I was invited back to Loughborough University to deliver a postgraduate lecture for their Natural Language Processing module. Having sat in their seats only a year earlier, it was a great opportunity to share insights beyond the syllabus and reflect on what I’d learned transitioning from academia into industry.
What do you love most about what you do?
The agency I have when tackling Research & Development problems. I’ve got the freedom to innovate, explore ideas and take ownership of delivering solutions, which makes the work both challenging and rewarding.
What does your typical working day look like?
After a morning stand-up with the team and outlining a game plan for the day, I get my head down and the music back on. Most days involve writing and debugging software or analysing the results of my latest experiment to see what works and what needs refining.
When you hit a wall workwise, what do you do?
There’s a lot of technical expertise in the team, so I like to bounce ideas around and get feedback. If it’s a software problem though, I stubbornly fall back on rubber duck debugging, talking through the issue step by step until the solution reveals itself.
