Muhammed Imran
Junior Data Scientist
Junior Data Scientist
Junior Data Scientist
Smart Trouble Shooting at Advanced Analytics
Works in Utrecht and from home
Lives in Zaandam
Worked for VodafoneZiggo since 2022
Through his work, Muhammed Imran Ozyar always has a direct impact on our customers, despite never working directly with them. Give him modem and router data and he'll find the root cause of a problem, or predict where one is likely to occur. That way, customers get the help they need quickly, their internet rarely fails and Muhammed makes a difference every day.
Spark. When Muhammed Imran heard that word during his job interview at VodafoneZiggo, he was sold. "More than once in negotiations with potential employers did I find out that the position was in reality about business intelligence. In other words, they were looking for someone who's good with spreadsheets, and I'm not at all interested in Excel. I recently completed a bachelor's in Data Science, so I was in the market for a job involving lots of data and the latest technologies. If a company works with Spark, then you know there's lots of data."
It's what? It's that Muhammed Imran and his colleagues immerse themselves in our billions of data nodes. And that may sound abstract, but what they do with data is in fact perfectly concrete. "The most impressive tool that our team has developed lately has to be the model that helps identify and precisely locate cable fractures based on data and signals that are readily available to us. As a result, we can quickly solve and even pre-empt internet outages, which saves our engineers lots of time and spares customers unnecessary frustration."
"Ensuring stable internet for our customers is fun. We developed a machine-learning model, for instance, that enables us to establish remotely whether a customer's internet set-up is correct. It analyses photographs sent to us by the customer of the situation in their home and tells us what's wrong or missing. As a result, customers get the help they need far more quickly because we don't have to send an engineer to track down the problem. And the great things is, the model keeps learning and getting better at what it does."
Creative solutions like the one described above are typical of Muhammed Imran's team. "There are eight of us and we all have very different backgrounds. Culturally - I'm a Turk and we have colleagues from India and Colombia and elsewhere - but professionally, too. And our team is 50% female, which unfortunately is still quite exceptional in this field. I'm really happy to be part of such a diverse team of people. I'm convinced that with the many different perspectives and ideas, we find solutions to problems far more quickly. We're living proof that #breakthebias pays off in a big way."
Making a difference is important to Muhammed Imran. "It's really chill for a new graduate like me to be welcomed to a company with open arms and taken so seriously. From day one, my ideas have been heard and I've been able to make significant contributions. And it's even more chill when you realise that your ideas make a difference far beyond the national borders within which VodafoneZiggo operates; everything we develop here goes to our parent company and that means that our work contributes to stable internet throughout Europe. How cool it that!”
It's better to be better. That's why Muhammed Imran and his colleagues spend up to eight hours of their working week doing research. "Data science is becoming increasingly mature and so as a company, you have to stay on top of developments if you're going to get ahead. As part of the effort to ensure that we do, I'm currently investigating different machine-learning techniques and doing case research into internet downtime. Also, I'm doing two courses through our Unlimited Learning programme: 'Advancement in Spark' and a data science course. Combine all that with all my colleagues' know-how and everything they're doing and you soon realise that we are truly at the leading edge of our field. I couldn't possibly have wished for a better challenge in data science than the one I'm enjoying at this ultra-modern company."
