The AF Group

Data Science Intern

  • Full-time
  • Tech
  • Honingham Thorpe

Description

About Us

The AF Group is the UK’s largest agricultural buying co-operative, owned by and run for the benefit of our farming Members. We help Members save time and money by consolidating orders, negotiating competitive pricing, and managing invoicing and payments with suppliers.


With increasing financial pressures in the agricultural sector, proactive risk management has never been more important.


The Opportunity

We’re seeking a data science intern to help us understand and mitigate our financial exposure, particularly in our supplier direct purchasing channel – where goods are collected by Members directly from suppliers, and we only learn of the transaction once invoiced.


You’ll work with a wide range of internal and external data, from historical procurement and payment records to third-party risk scoring tools like CreditSafe. This internship is ideal for someone passionate about data-driven decision-making and financial risk analysis who wants to make a tangible impact in a purpose-led organisation.


Key Responsibilities

  • Analyse Member procurement and payment behaviour to identify patterns
  • associated with credit risk.
  • Develop models to predict risk of default – especially for unmonitored supplier direct transactions.
  • Evaluate and integrate third-party risk data (e.g. CreditSafe scores) with internal datasets.
  • Recommend and test risk thresholds, early warning indicators, and intervention strategies.
  • Visualise insights and support the development of practical tools to aid decision-making by our finance and procurement teams.
  • Present findings and actionable recommendations to stakeholders, including senior leadership.


Person Specification

Skills & Experience

  • Strong analytical skills and experience working with datasets (academic or applied).
  • Proficiency in at least one data analysis language or tool (e.g. Python, R, SQL, Excel).
  • Ability to identify patterns and trends in complex data.
  • Basic understanding of statistical modelling and/or predictive analytics.
  • Ability to communicate findings clearly to non-technical audiences.
  • Experience working on a data science or analytics project (university, internship, or self-led) - desirable
  • Data visualisation skills (e.g. Tableau, Power BI, matplotlib, seaborn) - desirable
  • Familiarity with APIs, web scraping, or integrating third-party data sources - desirable
  • Experience with version control tools (e.g. Git/GitHub) - desirable


Knowledge

  • Familiarity with data analysis concepts such as regression, classification, correlation, and segmentation.
  • Awareness of financial risk concepts and the impact of late payments or defaults.
  • Understanding of credit scoring, financial modelling, or risk analysis techniques - desirable
  • Awareness of challenges in the agricultural or cooperative sectors - desirable


Qualifications

  • Currently studying (or recently completed) a Masters Degree or PhD in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Economics, Finance, or a related subject.

Benefits

Salary: £25,000 - £30,000 per annum

Hours: 37.5 hours per week


Additional Benefits:

  • 8% employer pension contribution
  • 26 days holiday per annum, plus bank holidays. This rises with each years service by an additional day, up to 7 extra days
  • Have your birthday off as an extra days holiday, if it falls on your working day
  • Free lunch daily from our onsite Café
  • AF Membership (giving discounts at hundreds of retailers and suppliers)
  • Life assurance
  • Health Insurance
  • Discounted gym membership
  • Cycle to work scheme
  • Hybrid working
  • Free onsite parking