Nabilah Safira
TechInAfrica – Shoprite is searching for aspiring data scientists. To be considered, candidates should at least possessed a postgraduate degree in either Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Operational Research, Quantitative Management (or similar quantitative degree), Computer Science, or Actuarial Science.
The Africa’s biggest retail enterprise viewed Data Science as a multidisciplinary field that combines Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science to automatically extract knowledge and insights from large amounts of data for the purposes of improved decision making.
“At the Shoprite Group, data sets involve sales, inventory, consumer spending, and much more.” The enterprise added.
Shoprite wanted to brace the future by training data scientists, inviting candidates to sign up for an apprenticeship at the Shoprite Group’s Data Science Academy. The application opens from now to the end of September, and the candidates will roll out for January 2020.
One of the academy’s 8 apprentices, Maegan Mackenzie, a 22-year-old graduate from Stellenbosch University, believed that Shoprite is the best place to experience the subject since the enterprise provides an incredible environment to learn about data science and its applications, while simultaneously gaining knowledge about the retail industry.
Apprentices will gain exposure to areas such as data validation and exploration, statistical modeling and machine learning across different areas that include pricing and promotions, inventory and waste management, yet apprentices will also benefit from job immersion and self-paced project work, both of which involve team dynamics and interactions, according to Shoprite.
Their learning process will be further enhanced with specific tools and languages, such as Tableau, SQL, Python, and AWS Cloud products, which are routinely needed when building data science applications. Mentoring that each apprentice receive from respective experienced data scientists will also guide them through real work problems, helping them applying their knowledge to solve the problems, and thus, paving their path as a ‘to-be-reckoned’ data scientist in the future.
The Shoprite Group serves more than 35 million customers annually through 16 brands and employs 147,000 people across 15 African countries.
Source: Businesstech.co.za
