Data Science and Insurance: Information Session with Liberty Mutual

A core aspect of CDS student career development efforts are our company information sessions. We recently held a virtual information session with Liberty Mutual. The session was facilitated by Kathryn Angeles, Director of Academic and Student Affairs and included talks with Liberty Mutual representatives Daniel McCarthy, Senior Campus Recruiter, Robert Schmidt, Data Scientist, and Martin Keenan, previous intern and current CDS MS student.

Company Overview

The presentation was kicked off by Daniel who gave a brief overview on the company and highlighted perks and benefits. Liberty Mutual is the sixth largest global P&C (property insurance and casualty insurance) company and the fourth largest in the U.S. On the Fortune 100 scale, Liberty Mutual is currently ahead of big names such as Facebook, Starbucks, Nike, and even American Express. The company has also been recognized by Forbes, the Human Rights Campaign, and Fortune 100 as one of the best places to work. Headquartered in Boston, Liberty Mutual currently empowers 45,000 employees in 29 countries globally. Career mobility within the company is one benefit Daniel focused on — employees who perform well have the opportunity to move across departments and explore interests in different areas. The company also provides flexible work arrangements — specifically the ability to work from home. Additionally, Liberty Mutual prioritizes equality, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) skill building, and gives employees the support they need (parental leave, employee resource groups, etc.).

The Data Science Team & Graduate Internship Program

Daniel wrapped up his portion by giving an overview on the data science team and their current professional opportunities. The company currently has over 250 data scientists. The data science team works on projects that touch a number of critical business functions such as sales, HR, and finance. Their data science internship program will occur summer 2023. The company typically hires between 20–25 graduate student candidates (MS + PhD) to participate in a 10–12 week paid assignment. Students are matched to a data science team to solve a particular challenge based on their experience and particular skill set. Once onboarded, students are assigned a full-time manager as well as a buddy/mentor. Interns can either relocate to Boston (Liberty provides a stipend for this) or can complete the internship remotely.

Areas that interns can work in include the following:

• Telematics — example: developing deep learning models to better understand customer behavior.
• Aerial imaging — example: building an application to detect overhanging trees in customer property photographs.
• Talent Analytics — example: generating suitable internal job recommendations for prospective employees.

Robert and Martin also provided their experiences working at Liberty Mutual in their respective roles and answered questions toward the end of the segment. Robert expressed how much he appreciated the collaborative environment, growth mindset, and how impactful he found his projects at Liberty. Martin emphasized how much he enjoyed the mentorship he experienced, the ability to work on large scale projects, and the company’s focus on innovation. Both also noted the reasonable workload and work-life balance afforded by the company as well.

Resources

Overall, the session was informative and one we hope was also fun for our students. To apply or view more information about their graduate internship, please visit the Liberty Mutual Data Science Graduate Internship page. For more information about data science at Liberty Mutual, please visit the Liberty Mutual Data Science Jobs page.