Current role
Senior Data Scientist
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Qwestrum — Career Profile
Ava Moore
Senior Data Scientist | Data Science & AI | Sydney, Australia
Current roleSenior Data Scientist
EducationUniversity of British Columbia (2018)
Short bio
Senior data scientist sharing the real career journey behind every dashboard. From statistics graduate to ML production, with the failed experiments included. Written for anyone considering analytics or AI as a path.
Why I'm sharing
Career advice rarely shows the messy parts. This is my attempt to make the path more honest for anyone considering it.
Career milestones
Statistics Undergraduate2013-2015
University of British Columbia — Education
Context
Discovered I loved statistics by accident — one professor made p-values make sense. Built a small dropout-prediction project for the placement cell.
Challenges
Math anxiety from school showed up again. Friends in engineering thought stats was a soft option.
Learnings
Statistics is the grammar of every data conversation later. Excel is underrated; SQL is underrated; both are still here.
Skills
Probability, regression, R, Excel, hypothesis testing, term papers
M.Sc. Statistics Student2015-2018
University of British Columbia — Higher Studies
Context
Switched from theory to applied. Internship summer between years was my first real-world dataset — messy, incomplete, full of human errors.
Challenges
Realising most of the job is cleaning data, not modelling. Tutorials never tell you that.
Learnings
If your data is wrong, your model is theatre. Spend an extra day on EDA — it saves a week of explaining bad results.
Outcome
Final thesis on credit risk got me a campus offer.
Skills
Bayesian methods, Python, scikit-learn, SQL, time series, A/B testing
Data Analyst2018-2021
TCS — First Job
Context
Started in analytics consulting for retail and BFSI clients. Half my time was building decks, half cleaning CSVs.
Challenges
Clients sometimes wanted answers, not analysis. Saying "we do not have enough data" was unpopular.
Learnings
An analyst who can explain trade-offs to a non-technical VP is worth more than one who can train an XGBoost from memory.
Outcome
Promoted from Analyst to Senior Analyst in 22 months. Built a churn dashboard still used by the client.
Skills
SQL, dashboards (Tableau, Power BI), stakeholder communication, business KPIs
Senior Data Scientist2021-Present
Microsoft — Career Switch
Context
Moved from consulting to a product team. Owning recommendation experiments and the metrics that decide what to ship.
Challenges
Consulting taught me to deliver decks; product taught me to deliver experiments. Different rhythm, different ego.
Learnings
Most ML wins are simpler features and better evaluation, not bigger models. Beware of leakage; beware of "lift" without confidence intervals.
Outcome
Led an experiment that lifted activation by 8% for a region with 30M users. Mentored two junior scientists into mid roles.
Advice
If your only tool is a model, every problem looks like a hackathon. Learn the business first.
Skills
PyTorch, MLOps, feature stores, experiment design, mentoring
Biography-focused profile
Ava Moore
Senior Data Scientist | Data Science & AI | Sydney, Australia
Data Scientist
Technology & Engineering | 10 years experience
Education
University of British Columbia (2018)
Short bio
Senior data scientist sharing the real career journey behind every dashboard. From statistics graduate to ML production, with the failed experiments included. Written for anyone considering analytics or AI as a path.
Why I'm sharing
Career advice rarely shows the messy parts. This is my attempt to make the path more honest for anyone considering it.
Journey overview
2013-2015 | Statistics Undergraduate
Duration: 2 years
Discovered I loved statistics by accident — one professor made p-values make sense. Built a small dropout-prediction project for the placement cell.
2015-2018 | M.Sc. Statistics Student
Duration: 3 years
Switched from theory to applied. Internship summer between years was my first real-world dataset — messy, incomplete, full of human errors.
2018-2021 | Data Analyst
Duration: 3 years
Started in analytics consulting for retail and BFSI clients. Half my time was building decks, half cleaning CSVs.
2021-Present | Senior Data Scientist
Duration: 5 years (ongoing)
Moved from consulting to a product team. Owning recommendation experiments and the metrics that decide what to ship.