Research scientist in Machine Learning, where technology and people meet

Combine the intellectual stimulation of a research role with a wide-ranging, operational position in a thriving business – and you have the perfect job for Matthieu Sarrazin, a Machine Learning research scientist at Homiwoo. Having joined the company in July 2022, he looks back at his career to date, the variety of his missions at Homiwoo, and the inspiration for his day-to-day work.

From music to artificial intelligence

"I have a rather unusual background," explains Matthieu, whose academic career reflects his interests in different subjects. A music lover, he first enrolled in a jazz school after passing his baccalaureate, before going on to study for a biology degree. "I really wanted to be involved in anti-ageing research, which I found out about in a video.” However, during the third year of his degree, he discovered computer science and neuroscience – which took him in yet another direction, cognitive science. After an intellectually rewarding Master's degree and a thesis on computational neuroscience – a discipline at the crossroads of neuroscience, mathematics and computer science – he joined Homiwoo in July 2022.

Though new to the property sector, Matthieu was attracted by the opportunities offered by the start-up. “After my thesis," he explains, "I wanted to continue in the research field and to increase my skills in Machine Learning. I'm delighted to have joined a company with a business plan that offers so many possibilities. I can work on a lot of different techniques and I’m learning something new all the time!" 

Between hard skills and soft skills

As part of an R&D team, Matthieu is leading both research and Machine Learning projects at the same time. The aim is to enhance Homiwoo’s offering with new information or to finetune property price estimates, for example, but his role is also to help with the launch of new, cutting-edge products.

"Part of my job is to monitor promising innovations for Homiwoo," says Matthieu, who scours the scientific literature on a daily basis in search of the most innovative and successful ways of dealing with specific problems. In addition to his research activities, Matthieu is also responsible for exploring and analysing large amounts of data for use in training Machine Learning models. "By studying huge amounts of data, we can spot patterns and establish statistics. And from there, we can create and then feed mathematical models that can extract useful information from that data by themselves," Matthieu explains.

As a research scientist in Machine Learning, the two facets of the job require excellent technical skills and a lot of curiosity. "You must be motivated by a desire to understand things and to study problems in depth, and above all, you need to know how to think outside the box," says Matthieu, before adding: "The best solutions often come when I log off from my computer and think for an hour or two." Lastly, he stresses the vital importance of communications in his work. "I'm not in direct contact with clients, but I communicate a lot with the R&D team. We discuss the various methods we are exploring and we critique each other's results, so that we can make progress together. You have to know how to simplify things and to be as clear as possible when you are presenting something."

Exploration, the key to understanding

Every day, Matthieu enjoys the intellectual challenge of his job. "It's the open-ended nature of the problems we're trying to solve that makes the search for a solution so interesting,” he reveals. “We don't know if we're going to find one, and that encourages us to try a lot of different techniques, which is exciting."

At the same time, Homiwoo is also a friendly environment, where people help each other and spend time together. "I really liked the atmosphere during my interviews," says Matthieu, who also appreciates the international aspects of his job. "Having grown up in the United States, I'm glad to be able to use English in my work.” In fact, Homiwoo has several English-speaking employees, and communication within the R&D team is mainly carried out in English – a real plus point for him.

As for his next step at Homiwoo, Matthieu sees himself supervising the teams working on innovative projects involving new technologies. His daily inspiration will remain the same, however – to explore, understand, learn and rise to new challenges!