The team at 15gifts are obsessed with the psychology of choice. It's what drives their intelligent decision engine platform, integrating recommendation technology into some of the UK's largest corporations and SMEs, to help customers find their ideal product with intelligent guidance.
With a number of new opportunities to join their Brighton-based team, we caught up with 15gifts to find out more about these roles, the people behind the engine and what they love about their job.
Sarah McCausland, People & Culture Manager
What are the key things you look for when interviewing someone for your team?
Our business is constantly growing and evolving and therefore we want to work with people who are excited by that, and want to be part of our journey. We look for someone who is passionate about what they do, and shares our values.
It’s important to us that everyone is a team player, and not only supports their colleagues, but goes out of their way to celebrate them. We look for people with an innovative mindset, that take real ownership of their responsibilities, and can help us to look for better ways of doing things. We have a strong culture of knowledge sharing, and therefore we want to see people that are keen to learn from others, and also share their own insights and experiences with us.
What opportunities are there for career progression at 15gifts?
There’s a lot of opportunity! Many people progress into senior and management positions during their time at 15gifts.
As well as supporting people in progressing upwards within their field, we also support many team members in taking a new direction in their career. For example, we’ve had people transition into our UX team and Data Engineering team, from other areas of the business. I’m also an example of that, having worked in our Customer Success Team, managing partnerships with our clients for a number of years, before I moved into People & Culture.
If you’re driven and passionate about progressing your career, we’ll do our very best to nurture and support you in that.
Stuart Day, Customer Analyst
What is your position, and how would you describe a typical working day?
I'm a Customer Analyst at 15gifts; I’m responsible for maintaining a great data relationship with our clients and providing insights which uncover opportunities or demonstrate ROI . I’d describe my typical working day as varied and exciting, with new and interesting challenges being presented to me everyday.
What experience do you need for the role?
Someone who has experience presenting complex ideas to clients in a commercially mindful way. We collect a large amount of data through our engine, so we would need someone who has the technical skills (SQL + python) to produce interesting and actionable insight. We are always looking for new and better ways to work in the analytics team, so someone who is naturally curious and keen to experiment with new ideas would fit in really well.
What's the most rewarding part of your job?
The ability to collaboratively work with different teams in order to have a genuine impact on the product and the relationships with our clients. All my colleagues are friendly and really creative, quick chats can often grow into ideas for features that are implemented and added to our products.
Beth Herring, Data Scientist
What is your position, and how would you describe a typical working day?
As a Data Scientist at 15gifts my typical day starts with a cup of coffee and a 15 minute company opener meeting on Zoom (created just for lockdown). It's a great way to start the day off and feel like you’re still in the office.
The rest of my day is varied between exploring new model improvements for the product and designing optimisations and tests for our clients. I’m always looking at how best to solve problems, sometimes this can mean reading papers and researching techniques, other times it could mean building tools in python that explore the product performance.
What experience do you need for the role?
To do this role you have to be a problem solver, someone who is curious and willing to explore solutions and to be comfortable in vocalising suggestions for improvements. In a more technical sense, you should be able to code in Python (this definitely doesn’t need to be a formal education!). A proven ability in interpreting data and an understanding of how to design effective hypothesis tests will also really help in this role.
You have to be a problem solver, someone who is curious and willing to explore solutions and be comfortable in vocalising suggestions for improvements
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
Solving the puzzle. Whether it’s through machine learning or an A/B test, I feel most fulfilled seeing my ideas come to fruition and getting to a solution to the initial problem.
Emily Becht, Customer Analytics Lead 
What is your position, and how would you describe a typical working day?
I’m the Customer Analytics Lead at 15gifts. Working with more than 10 industry leading Telco and Media brands means there’s never a dull moment in the Customer Analytics team. I currently split my time between looking after a small group of strategic clients, helping them to understand the data we can see from prospects using our engine, and supporting members of my team in building their client data narratives. The balance changes from week to week dependant on any regular deliverables or client needs.
I’ve always enjoyed having end to end ownership of my client's analytics, as I’m not just mining the data, or visualising it, but I’m presenting back to the client too, helping me to make their next piece of analytics even more tailored to what’s important to them.
What experience do you need for the role?
Prior to this role I worked in a range of Customer and Finance analytics roles at Tesco plc for 5 years. My time there meant I had plenty of experience working at pace, and for non-analytical stakeholders with very high expectations, both of which have been invaluable in my current role. Before that I did a degree in Geography, focusing on Cultural and Political Geography, so not the normal “maths & stats” background you might expect from an Analyst. The most important thing is for a love of problem solving and communication in this role.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
The most rewarding part of my role is without a doubt working within a team of people who are all working really hard to build each other up and celebrate others successes. You know that the hard work you put in will be recognised across the team, with frequent celebratory shout outs on Slack, it’s impossible to not see the value you’re providing in this role.
Working within a team of people who are all working really hard to build each other up and celebrate others successes...it's impossible to not see the value you're providing
Alice Garside, Senior Customer Success Manager 
What is your position, and how would you describe a typical working day?
I’m a Senior Customer Success Manager here at 15gifts and responsible for ensuring we work in partnership with our clients to demonstrate value and help them to achieve their goals.
We have a dedicated squad for each client made up of experts in Customer Success, Analytics, Data Science and Product. We’re there to understand the client goals and business challenges, and create success plans to grow the partnership together.
It is my role to ensure that our clients are getting real value out of our technology; we utilise data to plan optimisations and improvements, and make sure to provide performance insights back to the client.
My days aren’t typical; it’s generally a mixture of client engagement and workshops, internal squad planning and wider teamwork across 15gifts to deliver on projects and initiatives in the client’s success plan.
Our clients are as ambitious and forward thinking as our internal teams and things tend to move very quickly - that’s what keeps it exciting!
What experience do you need for the role?
A great understanding and passion for problem solving and strategy, it drives what we do. By understanding a client’s business goals and the reason behind them, we can work as a team to create solutions and act on opportunities for innovation and growth - ultimately leading to success for our clients!
A great understanding and passion for problem solving and strategy, it drives what we do.
Relationship building is absolutely key too. We work with diverse client teams - from our valued day to day champions to our senior execs, to onboarding a brand new team, it’s imperative to collaborate at all levels.
It also helps to have an understanding of the telecom and ecommerce industry and take an interest in how buying behaviours are changing (massively so since Covid!) so that we can be agile and adapt our approach to help our clients and their customers.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
For me, it’s getting to truly understand a customer’s strategy and help them in being successful. Presenting a success plan that demonstrates how 15gifts can be strategically aligned always gives me a buzz. The reward comes from successful initiatives driving real ROI and in seeing our clients be a success!
If you like the sound of working at 15gifts, you can check out all their latest job vacancies here.
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