Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Company Description Join us to shape the way energy trades in the future

The energy we use to power our daily lives is delivered through pipelines, on ships, via truck and rail, and in wires and batteries. As a leading energy trader, Vitol is at the heart of energy markets worldwide, moving more than 5% of the world’s energy, every single day. For 50 years we’ve challenged the status quo, looking for opportunities to create efficiencies and improve performance, and the recent explosion of data in the industry is just the next step in that journey.

Today’s energy markets face new challenges: changes in the way people consume energy, rising economic powers, new technologies, and geo-political shifts are changing the energy landscape, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic and the beginning of the global energy transition. The Data Science team works closely with the commercial decision makers, using cutting edge machine learning to shape our understanding of the world’s energy markets, identify new opportunities and turn data into impactful decision making.

This is an opportunity to join a friendly, entrepreneurial and non-hierarchical environment, in a fun and agile team, and help revolutionize the way data is used within the organization.

About Vitol

Vitol is an energy and commodities company with revenues of $400 billion in 2023; its primary business is the trading and distribution of energy products globally – it trades over seven million barrels per day of crude oil and products and, at any time, has 250 ships transporting its cargoes.

Vitol’s clients include national oil companies, multinationals, leading industrial companies and utilities. Founded in Rotterdam in 1966, today Vitol serves clients from some 40 offices worldwide and is invested in energy assets globally including 16mm3 of storage, 480kbpd of refining capacity, and 7,000 service stations. To date, we have committed over $2.5 billion of capital to renewable projects, and are identifying and developing low-carbon opportunities around the world.

Who are we?

Our people are our business: the company’s value derives ultimately from them. It is on their expertise, innovation, drive and relationships that we depend for the development and growth of our business. Talent is precious to us and we create an environment in which individuals can reach their full potential, unfettered by hierarchy.

Our business is global and our people are as diverse as the world in which we work. We have over 60 nationalities among our team – giving us a diversity of thinking which we believe translates into a greater understanding of our customers and better and more informed decisions.

Job Description

As our portfolio of work continues to grow, we are looking for an experienced Machine Learning Engineer to join our data science and machine learning team. The individual will work closely with the data and machine learning specialists, software engineers and commercial teams to deliver machine learning models and applications. We work across the trading business, operations, and other support functions; so the individual will need to be comfortable working with a variety of stakeholders and technologies.

The Machine Learning Engineer at Vitol has visibility and impact across the full project workflow: from working with business stakeholders to help define the project, to data collation and processing, exploratory analysis, model selection and tuning, and implementation of production models.

The successful candidate will join a team of experienced, collaborative practitioners, who are (pragmatically) solving some of the most challenging and impactful problems the energy industry is facing; as well as pushing the boundaries around the ‘art of the possible’.

Core Responsibilities include:

- Being an energetic and enthusiastic member of a team uniquely positioned to bring the power of data to bear on the inner workings of the energy industry

- Ability to relate effortlessly with the commercial side of the business, being a thought leader and looking for new ways how AI/DS can create value for Vitol

- Leading design, development, and deployment of machine learning systems, bringing their technical knowledge and experience into the team, and using this to create real solutions to real problems.

- Prioritization of projects based on changing business conditions and a keen eye for where maximum value can be delivered

- Collaborating with cross-functional technology teams to gather requirements and ensure the solutions align with business objectives

- Helping integrate the team’s solutions (including GenAI) into existing systems and platforms to provide seamless user experiences and scale adoption

- Actively participating in code reviews, experiment design and tooling decisions to help drive the team’s velocity and quality

- Helping build data and machine learning expertise within the business through knowledge sharing

Qualifications

- Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, or a related field. Ph.D. is a plus

- Fluency in Python with the ability to write clean, modular, well-documented code as well as a solid understanding of coding best practices

- 5-7+ years in industry developing and deploying machine learning models, preferably in NLP, LLM and ideally generative AI domains

- Experience in successfully applying LLMs to solve business problems, solid understanding of Gen AI design paradigms and best practices

- Experience with machine learning frameworks and libraries such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Transformers

- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS) and containerization technologies (Docker)

- Excellent problem-solving skills, ability to work independently and in a team

- Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders

- Understanding of machine learning fundamentals, including deep learning, generative models, NLP techniques, such as sentiment analysis, and entity recognition and disambiguation

Additional Information

Desired Experience

- Practical, real world (production) experience with Gen AI based models and their applications

- Experience in the energy or commodities trading industry, with knowledge of financial markets and trading concepts

- Experience integrating machine learning systems into interactive dashboards (e.g. Dash, Streamlit) and present use cases of machine learning to non-technical colleagues

- Time series modelling (both machine-learning and econometric approaches)

- Application of a wide range of ML methodologies to real life applications

- Enterprise software development (systems design, code review, version control, etc.)

- Data orchestrators (Airflow, Dagster) and cloud-based ETL/ELT pipelines

- Awareness of continuous integration and delivery concepts/technologies

Personal Characteristics

- A self-motivated individual who thrives on seeing the results of their work make an impact in the business

- Strong communication skills, both verbally and in writing

- Proven ability to be flexible, work hard, and a sense for the art of the possible

- Methodical, organized and with an attention to detail - in general, in experimental design, and in code!

- Willingness to share their knowledge and learn from others

- An interest in learning about the commodities space

- Resourceful, able to think creatively and adapt in a dynamic environment

- Team player, with an open non-political style and a high level of integrity

- Desire to be a thought-partner in a fast-growing team, and make an impact at a business that sits at the heart of the world’s energy flows

What We Offer

- Competitive salary and benefits package

- Large diversity of projects with real-world impacts on a truly global scale

- Entrepreneurial environment within a flat hierarchy, where great ideas come to life quickly

- Close collaboration with various business units across our key regions (eg. London, Singapore, Houston, Geneva)

- A highly motivated DS and ML team comprised of experienced individuals with a supportive attitude and great team spirit

- Being part of the energy transition through increased emphasis on renewable & alternative energy sources at a pivotal moment in the industry

- Strong management commitment to incorporating machine learning into the future of Vitol’s operations

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.