Actuarial Technologist - Manager (Financial Services)

As one of the UK's largest Actuarial practices we're market leaders providing insights and solutions for all businesses that face significant and complex risks. We play an important role in supporting clients through uncertain times. Actuaries analyse how future events could affect businesses and we calculate the impact these events could have on our clients. Using our risk and analytical skills and predictive insights, we calculate the impact of changing demographics or legislation on pension schemes, the effects that changes in financial markets have on different organisations, or how likely a business is to be hit by an earthquake.
About the role

We are strengthening our technology capability within in PwC's UK Actuarial Services practice and are looking for ambitious application developers with an analytical or actuarial background to join us on the journey.

The role will be part of a team focused on developing repeatable solutions to address our clients' problems, translating requests from either client facing teams or clients directly into to analytical and automated solutions that will increase insight, improve efficiency and create a more controlled environment. You will deliver these solutions using a range of large, complex datasets and tools such as R, SQL and Python and will have significant experience of the end to end development cycle of solutions. Recent examples include:

• Working with a major UK life insurer to develop a new suite of tools that can be used to automate and analyse trends coming of actuarial models
• Developing a new model validation tool that can be used to support the audit of our banking clients credit risk models
• Developing a new finance reporting solution for a major UK insurer that can replace and reduce reliance on excel models
• Developing machine learning models that can replicate and identify errors in client models

On a day-to-day basis, you will be expected to be working on the development of solutions for a number of client problems and will have access to a number of junior coders with experience in complex modelling across insurance and banking, who you will be expected to coach and train on the job.

About our team

The PwC Actuarial Services practice has offices in London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol and Mumbai. Our consultants focus on insurance, investment, banking and corporate clients, led by a fifteen strong partner team. This makes us the largest actuarial practice within the large accounting firms. We play the leading role in the 1000 strong actuarial community in PwC worldwide. We are keen advocates of using technology to efficiently deliver market leading solutions for our clients and are looking to recruit people who have the skills and experience to support this.

Within the actuarial technology team, we predominantly work in insurance and banking, but also work across a range of different sectors that benefit from the skillset of an actuary. Many of the projects give you the opportunity to work in multidisciplinary teams or with people from our network firms overseas.

You'll therefore be actively involved in the development of new and existing client relationships and be expected to build a strong personal profile internally in PwC and externally in the market.

We would expect you to take an active role in delivering the strategic technology ambitions of the actuarial practice. This could include being involved in the development of one or more of our key areas of focus. We encourage the team to think laterally about how your skillset can be applied to new and emerging areas of focus. You will also be involved in the development of more junior staff through on the job coaching, acting as a career coach or mentor.

The firm offers an unparalleled development framework which not only ensures we have strong technical experience, but also supports wider softer skills which are vital to success with our clients. Based on your experience and ambitions, we'll ensure you have clear development plan, which will enable progression to more senior levels within the practice.

We have a strong sense of culture developed over our 25+ year history. We work in a friendly, positive and vibrant atmosphere, where our people are encouraged to take responsibility at an early stage and proactively develop their career. We seek to develop accomplished consultants, not just technically strong. This means exposure to a wide range of project situations, often working with specialists from other disciplines within PwC such as Transaction Services, Regulatory, Risk Advisory, Corporate Finance, Business Recovery/Restructuring, Forensics, Tax, Accounting and Internal Audit.

Who we're looking for

We are looking for self-motivated individuals with experience of developing automated solutions for analytical teams from end-to-end. This includes having a strong understanding of cloud technology (Azure), developing complex or machine learning models in R or Python and experience developing user interfaces for clients to access and tailor solutions (e.g. using R Shiny). The successful applicant will have hands on knowledge of this development cycle and a keen interest in developing new and exciting tools that can be used by or clients, either hosted on PwC's infrastructure or with the client directly. Experience of heavily regulated markets such as financial services is also beneficial along with strong communication skills.

In recognition of the need to invest in future growth of the practice, you'll not only have demonstrated relevant technical skills and experience, but also have the potential, with some development support, to move on to lead on key client accounts and product areas, using your strong relationship and people management skills.

Requirements

Your skills

• Good understanding of how to develop and deploy cloud-based technologies
• Experience working with subject matter experts to develop solutions in an agile way
• Experience managing teams of people and prioritising deliverables under tight timescales
• Strong coding knowledge (Python and/or R) and preferably strong experience in developing solutions in R Shiny
• Experience with visualisation products such as Power BI
• Advanced MS Office skills in particular MS Powerpoint and MS Excel
• Strong time management, client handling and development skills, including inter-personal sensitivity and influencing skills.
• Knowledge of how Actuarial functions work from data gathering through to reporting and strategic decision making
• Strong oral, listening and written communication skills
• Be flexible and have the ability to multi-task effectively.
• Be strongly committed to both personal and corporate success.
• Be self-motivated, in particular taking responsibility for personal development in technical and broader consulting skills

Your experience

• Have experience of developing and deploying analytical solutions that have delivered tangible results organisations that you have worked for
• Have used analytical tools in a Big Data environment and handled a wide array of data types using a combination of cloud-based tools and R/Python
• Preferably spent a large part of your career to date in the financial services sector, either within a company or a consultancy.
• Have led or been part of a diverse team, responsible for end to end delivery of projects.

Qualifications

Essential

• Bachelor's degree or above
• A technical background in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Data Analytics or similar
• Demonstrable work experience in a data discipline
• Proficiency in R or Python (with a willingness to work across both)
• Qualified Actuary
• Demonstrable experience of developing tangible solutions, including user interfaces, that have been embedded into businesses
• Experience developing visualisations in Tableau or Power

Desirable

• Ability to gain a UK Government Security Clearance
• Experience in SQL/SAS/R/Python and R shiny
• Experience in Financial services working with analytical teams to deliver automated solutions
• Experience working with Actuaries.

The skills we look for in future employees

All our people need to demonstrate the skills and behaviours that support us in delivering our business strategy. This is important to the work we do for our business, and our clients. These skills and behaviours make up our global leadership framework, 'The PwC Professional'.

The PwC Professional focuses on five core attributes; whole leadership, business acumen, technical capabilities, global acumen and relationships. We use this framework to recruit, develop and assess our people, at all grades and all areas of our business, because we expect all of our people to be leaders.

http://www.pwc.com/uk/en/careers/experienced/applying-to-pwc.jhtml

Diversity

We work in a changing world which offers great opportunities for people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. We seek to attract and employ the best people from the widest talent pool as well as those who reflect the diverse nature of our society. And we aim to encourage a culture where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths. Creating value through diversity is what makes us strong as a business. www.pwc.com/uk/diversity

As an organisation with an increasingly agile workforce, we're open to flexible working arrangements where appropriate.