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James Laird-Smith

Contact Info

Development & academic

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Last updated on 2024-10-10.

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James Laird-Smith

Current role

Data Scientist

Bank of England

London, UK

July 2021 - (present)

* See Employment History section on next page for more details.

Education

University of Cape Town

Master of Commerce in Finance

Cape Town, South Africa

2015 - 2017

Thesis Topic: Market Betas on the JSE

* See Academic Publication and Master’s Research sections on page 4 for more details.

University of Cape Town

Bachelor of Business Science

Cape Town, South Africa

2009 - 2014

Specialisation: Finance

I completed the following higher-level courses:

  • Research and survey statistics
  • Advanced micro and macroeconomics
  • Econometrics
  • Applied investments
  • Alternative investments
  • Financial research

Programming Skills Summary

R

Level: Expert

N/A

2014 - (present)

  • Base
  • Tidyverse
  • Modelling
  • Visualisation
  • OOP using S3
  • Automation
  • Package development
  • Performance optimisation

SQL

Level: Advanced

N/A

N/A

Vega-Lite (in JavaScript)

Level: Intermediate

N/A

N/A

* See Programming Skills section on page 3 for a full breakdown of all areas.

Employment History

Data Scientist

Bank of England

London, UK

July 2021 - (present)

The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom

I have two broad roles that I fulfill at the Bank. In the first place, I am the main architect behind the Bank’s big data user infrastructure and tooling. I also lead projects with various Bank departments to improve their data science processes and practices. A few notable items from my work:

  • I have built and maintain an array of web-scrapers which collect data the Bank requires for its operations.
  • I have built and maintain many R packages that enable Bank staff to conduct data analysis on the Bank’s big data servers.
  • I have built and now administer a custom automation system to allow Bank staff to automate potentially long or intensive data operations.
  • I have led work to modernise one of the Bank’s important statistical models.

Data Scientist

The Financial Times (FT)

London, UK

Nov 2018 - July 2021

The FT is an international print and digital newspaper with a focus on business and economic current affairs.

Previous role: Data Analyst (up to Feb 2020)

The FT’s Data Science team is responsible for creating and productionising statistical and machine learning models for use within the organisation. While at the FT, I was involved in the following initiatives:

  • I was at the forefront of developing our Lifetime Value (LTV) modeling, where we estimate how likely each of our customers are to renew their subscriptions.
  • As part of our product strategy I undertook a project to attribute value to our various product categories. This involved determining how much monetary value and engagement power is generated by each part of our digital real-estate.
  • I have performed scenario modeling on a number of proposed product and commercial changes to determine their potential effect on advertising and subscription revenue.
  • I’ve been involved in training other members of staff in how to use R.

Analyst

ICBC Standard Bank (ICBCS)

London, UK

May 2018 - Jul 2018

ICBCS is a global financial markets and commodities bank based in London.

I worked in the the Client Referential Data (CRD) team which is responsible for managing client static and reference data.

Specialist

Maitland Group

Cape Town, South Africa

Mar 2015 - Nov 2017

Maitland Group is a global advisory and administration firm providing third-party fund administration to money managers.

While at Maitland, I was part of the Instrument and Fund Setup team.

Programming Skills

R

Level: Expert

N/A

2014 - (present)

I’ve been using R for many years now and so I think it’s worth providing a bit of detail on some of the skills I have gained.

R is a programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphics

Package development

I’ve developed many R packages of various levels of complexity and so I am very comfortable with the package development work-flow. This includes set-up, documentation and unit-testing.

Package development has also given me competence with R’s object orientated system, in particular with S3.

Performance optimisation

While developing R packages, I’ve learned how to make R code more performant by using techniques such as microbenchmarking and tools like profvis.

Data visualisation

I’ve contributed extensively to the the FT’s internally built ggplot2 theme, which is called ftplottools. In doing so, I’ve added extra options to customise placement of plot components and to make text rendering more accessible.

Automation

While at the FT, I’ve deployed various automated models and processes. For example, We have many statistical and machine learning models that are deployed to run on RStudio Connect. We also monitor the health of our code by integrating with CI tools, namely Circle CI and Github Actions.

SQL

Level: Advanced

N/A

2014 - (present)

SQL is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system.

I’ve been using SQL for many years now and am completely comfortable with all elements of the syntax. This includes advanced topics such as query optimisation. The dialect that I have worked with most is BigQuery’s standard syntax, but I have also used Redshift and MS SQL Server.

While at the FT, I have contributed to our own internal SQL style guide to help standardise good style practices across the business.

Vega-Lite (in JavaScript)

Level: Intermediate

N/A

2019 - (present)

I’ve created and published several charts using Vega-Lite. They can be viewed on my website under www.jameslairdsmith.com/charts/.

Vega-Lite is a high-level grammar of interactive graphics with both JSON and JavaScript APIs.

Academic Publication

A study of total beta specification through symmetric regression: the case of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Environ Syst Decis (2016) 36: 114

N/A

Jun 2016

Laird-Smith, J., Meyer, K. & Rajaratnam, K.

This journal article is a modified form of the project I completed in the final year of my undergraduate degree. The research examines the need for new methodology and specification for the CAPM beta parameter on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). It is available through the Springer online portal.

Master’s Research

Market Betas on the JSE: Market Segmentation, Estimation & Empirical Evaluation

MCom Dissertation Topic at the University of Cape Town

N/A

2015 - 2017

Supervisor: Kanshukan Rajaratnam

This dissertation was submitted as my M.Com (Finance) degree requirement at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and as such it is available online from UCT Libraries under their open access policy.

The dissertation uses statistical methods and in particular Factor Models to:

  • Discover variables that can be used as predictors of investment return.
  • Simulate and compare a large number of trading strategies.
  • Conduct testing to make models more robust and consistent.

Packages

gs

Author and maintainer

N/A

Nov 2018 - (present)

A package to make recurring calendar events a little easier by providing a simple grammar for expressing them using R code. The package includes functions to:

  • Represent all kinds of date elements found in the lubridate package: years, months, weeks, days, weekdays, quarters, semesters etc.
  • Represent dates in terms of their relations to one another, such as the “third Friday of July” or the “last Thursday in August”.
  • Specify ranges of dates, such as “after the first Monday in July” but “before the last weekday of August”.
  • Compose the above elements together in arbitrarily complex patterns.

Conference Proceedings

Introducing gs

rstudio::conf

San Francisco, USA

Jan 2019

E-Poster

For this conference I was asked to create an interactive presentation showcasing the gs package, the details of which can be found on the previous page. The session for presenting the e-posters was held during the conference opening function.

RStudio’s annual Conference

Introducing gs

EARL

London, UK

Sep 2019

Contributed talk

For this conference I was asked to deliver a 30 minute presentation on the {gs} package, the details of which can be found on the previous page.

Enterprise Applications of the R Language

Teaching Experience

Economics Tutor

University of Cape Town

Cape Town, South Africa

2010 - 2016

  • Microeconomics
  • Macroeconomics
  • Microeconomics II (Intermediate)
  • Macroeconomics II (Intermediate)

Head Tutor

Smuts Hall Residence

Cape Town, South Africa

2010

  • Recruitment and coordination of all residence tutoring.

Speech & Debate Achievements

All in the British Parliamentary (BP) format.

Finalist

South African National Universities Debating Championships (SANUDC)

Cape Town, South Africa

2014

Also 2nd-top team and semi-finalist, Botswana 2015.

Top breaking team

Pan African Universities Debating Championships

Pretoria, South Africa

2011

Semi-final judge

World Universities Debating Championships

Cape Town, South Africa

2019