About Permira
Permira is a global investment firm that backs successful businesses with growth ambitions. Founded in 1985, the firm advises funds across two core asset classes, private equity and credit, with total committed capital of approximately €80bn. The Permira private equity funds make both long-term majority (Buyout) and minority (Growth Equity) investments in four key sectors: Technology, Consumer, Healthcare, Services. The Permira credit funds support businesses with flexible financing solutions across Direct Lending, Strategic Opportunities and CLO Management. Established in 2007, the firm advises investment funds and products which have provided approximately €20 billion of debt capital to over 300 businesses.
Role Overview
We are seeking an individual to join our AI Lab which sits within our Technology Value Creation Team. Our portfolio includes many of the world’s leading software and tech-enabled companies with landmark technology investments including Zendesk, Mimecast, Informatica, Squarespace, McAfee, and many more. You can learn more about our portfolio here: https://www.permira.com/portfolio
This team will be a central entity that develops and deploys machine learning capabilities across Permira, collaborating with our teams and sectors. At Permira, AI is not just another IT initiative—it’s a fundamental shift in how we work, think, and operate. We are committed to embedding AI deeply into the fabric of our products and workflows—not merely as an add-on, but as a reimaging of what our offerings can be in an AI-native world.
Our strategy focuses on identifying a few high-impact, needle-moving use cases where AI can drive measurable value. The focus of the AI Lab will be first internal use cases, to deploy AI to make better and faster investment decisions, and secondly to the portfolio, supporting Permira portfolio companies on specific AI initiatives. Our goal with the AI Lab is encourage our teams and portfolio companies to be truly AI-native and drive tangible impact with faster innovation velocity, streamlined revenue efficiency, and deliberate cost savings.
This is a hands-on role, where you will spend most of your time developing in Python together with our team of Data Scientists (DSs) and Machine Learning Engineers (MLEs). You will also be interfacing directly with subject matter experts and stakeholders, e.g. to evaluate the feasibility of potential DS use cases or to explain how your model works during a Team Review.
This role is based in Permira’s Milan office, and you will be part of a geographically distributed team (UK/US/Europe) that embraces remote and hybrid collaboration.
Key Responsibilities
- (Develop & ship models) Develop and maintain ML models for a range of use cases at Permira. Ensure these models smoothly reach production and bring measurable value to our stakeholders
- (Analysis) Perform efficient exploratory data analysis (EDA) and present key insights to colleagues & stakeholders
- (Best practices) Adopt best practices and standards for the development of robust ML models
- (MLOps) Collaborate closely with MLEs to prepare your code & model for production using our ML Platform
- (Project start-up) Help evaluate the feasibility of new use cases for ML
What We’re Looking For
We are looking for a high-performing, analytically sharp, and emotionally intelligent professional who thrives at the intersection of AI, business transformation, and investment. Ideal candidates will have:
- 2-5 years’ experience in data science and machine learning, including the development of models that successfully went to production
- You are an expert in using applied ML on structured data, in particular regression and classification problems
- You have basic experience with Generative AI, both large language models (LLMs) and embedding models, especially leveraging GenAI in non-chat applications
- You approach complex problems in a structured way, always looking for the simplest, pragmatic solutions
- You understand the technical and non-technical constraints of a business problem
- You are detail-oriented but can also quickly shift priorities if required
- You enjoy working collaboratively in a cross-functional & distributed team environment
- You have great presentation skills and can communicate to a wide variety of audiences
- You have a strong foundation in statistics
- You have solid software engineering skills and love coding in Python
- You know your way around a linux shell and are comfortable with Git for version control.
- You know the scikit-learn API inside and out
- You are comfortable in an agile Way of Working, with Scrum or similar frameworks
- A strong cultural fit with Permira—team-first, intellectually curious, low-ego, and entrepreneurial
Nice to have:
- Experience with native AI suites, for example, Google Cloud (i.e. Platform Vertex AI) or Microsoft Azure
- Experience with (Py)Spark to handle large datasets
- Familiarity with DevOps & MLOps principles
- M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Machine Learning, the natural sciences, or similar
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