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Zubair Jalal

About

MSc Data Science candidate at the University of Leicester, on track for Distinction, with a BSc in Mathematics and Economics. Two years building end-to-end machine learning in industry and applying quantitative analysis across finance, risk and public-sector data, equally suited to data science, analyst or finance/risk analytics roles.

Location
Leicester, UK
Status
MSc Data Science with Industry, University of Leicester (graduating 2026)

Experience

Junior Data Scientist

2024 – Present

The Digital Glow (Remote, contract)

Two-year remote engagement delivering machine-learning fault detection and BI across a solar and tech company's installed solar fleet, covering model development, data pipelines, explainability and ongoing monitoring.

  • Built a two-stage fault-detection system in Python (an XGBoost baseline on engineered telemetry features, followed by an autoencoder for anomaly detection), monitoring 200 live solar systems across inverter, battery and panel data.
  • Raised the fault-catch rate from 78% to 86% and cut average downtime per fault from 3.5 hours to 2 by surfacing faults earlier for proactive maintenance.
  • Engineered SQL pipelines aggregating multi-source telemetry and CRM data, and applied SHAP to surface the key underperformance and fault drivers for the operations team.
  • Built Power BI dashboards for BAU monitoring of energy production, system health and commercial KPIs, and monitored deployed models for performance drift over time.

Match Official

Oct 2023 – May 2025

University of Liverpool Campus Football (Liverpool, UK)

Managed match-day logistics for a 16-team league, increasing fixture completion by 20% and reducing formal grievances by 10%.

  • Developed and presented PowerPoint analytics on conduct distribution and disciplinary trends, advising team captains on behavioural improvements and regulatory compliance.
  • Served as primary point of contact for inter-team disputes, negotiating scheduling shifts and kickoff logistics using availability data.

Academic Mentor & Tutor

Mar 2019 – Jul 2021

Livingstone Kolobeng College (Botswana)

Managed personalised learning programmes for four students, improving average assessment scores by 17%.

  • Authored detailed performance reports for parents, using diagnostic assessments to identify subject-specific bottlenecks.
  • Designed structured academic timetables and long-term learning roadmaps, meeting curriculum milestones while balancing shifting priorities.

Education

MSc Data Science with Industry

Sep 2025 – Sep 2026

University of Leicester

  • On track for Distinction.
  • Botswana Top Achiever Scholarship: full government scholarship awarded to the nation's highest performers.
  • Ranked #1 of cohort in Excel for Data Science and #3 in Statistics for Data Science.

BSc (Hons) Mathematics and Economics

Sep 2022 – Jun 2025

University of Liverpool

Key modules: Financial Mathematics, Financial & Actuarial Modelling, Securities Markets, Financial Reporting, Linear Statistical Models

A-Levels

2016 – 2021

Livingstone Kolobeng College, Botswana

  • Mathematics (A), Economics (A), Physics (A).

Core skills

Machine Learning & AI

  • Supervised, unsupervised and deep learning (LSTM, autoencoders)
  • Gradient boosting (XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost)
  • Random Forest
  • Survival analysis (Cox PH)
  • Anomaly detection
  • Imbalanced-data methods
  • Hyperparameter tuning (Optuna)
  • Monte Carlo simulation

Explainable AI

  • SHAP
  • Feature-importance analysis
  • Model interpretability for clinical and business stakeholders

Programming

  • Python (pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn)
  • R (Tidyverse, Quarto)
  • SQL
  • VBA
  • Git / GitHub

Deployment & Workflow

  • Model deployment and drift monitoring
  • Reproducible data pipelines
  • Cross-validation
  • Agile and cross-functional teamwork

Visualisation & BI

  • Power BI
  • Tableau (LODs, dashboards, geospatial)
  • Excel (advanced: PivotTables, slicers, KPI dashboards)

Beyond the work

Professional footballer for Mochudi Centre Chiefs FC; Botswana U17 and U21 international; signed a professional contract at 18. Languages: English, Setswana, conversational Afrikaans and Arabic.