Ian Shaylor

Head of Insight and Data, British Gas

Ian has worked in what we now call Data Science since 2002 when he joined a spin-out of the University of Oxford’s Robotics department as a junior software developer. That spin-out developed neural networks and other machine learning for the BioTech and Aerospace industries. By 2009 when Rolls-Royce acquired that company Ian was the General Manager of their new subsidiary. Within Rolls-Royce Ian progressed to various senior management roles in a sophisticated data organisation that Rolls-Royce publishes as underpinning revenues of £7Bn. There followed a move into Siemens when it acquired Rolls-Royce’s Energy division, where Ian was the Global Head of Data. This role included the team responsible for global real-time monitoring of multi-$million assets using Machine Learning detection, including a particularly difficult period when power generators feeding peak power into New York were failing regularly and new models were built and used from an operations centre in Warwick England, in real-time.

Ian then moved on to British Gas to be Head of Smart and subsequently Head of Customer Insight and Data (still incorporating all Smart data) for their business division, a business with £3Bn of annual revenues. Overseeing a team of more than 60 data, insight and ML professionals, of various skills, he has most recently built their AI/ML team from scratch, already delivering front line benefit, within the 2017 calendar year.