United Kingdom · Technology and data · Senior (5-8 years)

Senior Data Mining Specialist

Here is the whole job, in plain words. What it is, what you decide, how you're judged, how people get here and where they go next. Then the part no course gives you: twelve AI tutors who learn your work.

Free to start: a plan built for this role, and a Future Fluency module to try first. No card.

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One email: what AI is changing in this job, and where to start free. With a link back here. Nothing else follows unless you confirm your address.

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  • Experience bandSenior (5-8 years)
  • Direct reportsNo direct reports
  • Reports toLead Data Mining Specialist
  • UK framework levelUsually a manager, or the deepest specialist in a team

Also advertised as Senior Data Scientist (Focus on Mining) · Lead Analytical Specialist · Machine Learning Engineer (Data Focus)

Built on 43,079 real UK job descriptions we analysed · grounded in qualifications employers recognise

1From this job to a course

The qualifications matched to this job

Pearson BTEC Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Computing for England Pearson Education Ltd · Level 5 · covers 6 of 16 standards
NCC Education Level 5 Extended Diploma in Computing with Data Science NCC Education Limited · Level 5 · covers 4 of 16 standards
Pearson BTEC Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Digital Technologies Pearson Education Ltd · Level 5 · covers 3 of 16 standards
NOCN Level 4 certificate for Data Analysts NOCN · Level 4 · covers 7 of 16 standards
OTHM Level 7 Diploma in Data Science OTHM Qualifications · Level 7 · covers 5 of 16 standards
Pearson BTEC Level 4 Higher National Certificate in Computing for England Pearson Education Ltd · Level 4 · covers 3 of 16 standards

Matched from the standards this job is measured against: a suggestion, not an official ruling.

The units you would start with

Data Analytics Pearson BTEC Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Computing for England
Introduction to Data Science and Big Data NCC Education Level 5 Extended Diploma in Computing with Data Science
Practical Data Science NOCN Level 4 certificate for Data Analysts
Data Science Foundations OTHM Level 7 Diploma in Data Science

The future skills this job leans on

AI Fluency working with AI as a thinking partner
Data Fluency turning numbers into a decision
AI Governance Fluency using AI responsibly
Systems Fluency seeing the whole picture
Your Plan Illustration

Built for Senior Data Mining Specialist

4 units that map to this job, from the qualifications that cover it.

  1. Data Analytics Pearson Education Ltd · covers 6 of 16 standards Level 5
  2. Introduction to Data Science and Big Data NCC Education Limited · covers 4 of 16 standards Level 5
  3. Practical Data Science NOCN · covers 7 of 16 standards Level 4
  4. Data Science Foundations OTHM Qualifications · covers 5 of 16 standards Level 7
These are the real units behind this job, in the order they rank for it. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

2AI and this work

Will AI change your work as a Senior Data Mining Specialist?

Nobody can say exactly how. Here is what this job is being asked for next, and where to start.

The new skills this role is being asked for

  • Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration
  • Explainable AI (XAI) Techniques
Why each one is rising

The future skills this job leans on

We'll only ever tell you what we can actually back up. No hype, no scare tactics.

What happens when you start

Next, a free account. We build your Senior Data Mining Specialist plan as you set up, starting with a Future Fluency module on using AI in your job. No card.

Your first Future Fluency module is free. After that, your AI tutor is £70 a month.

3What this role really is

A Senior Data Mining Specialist leads analytical projects, digging into large datasets to find patterns and build predictive models that shape business decisions. The work means owning problems from start to finish, from framing the question to delivering the answer, and often guiding less experienced colleagues along the way.

4What you'd actually use

The tools this job runs on, and how well you'd need to know each one.

SQL (PostgreSQL, T-SQL, Snowflake SQL) Expert

Writing and optimising complex, multi-join queries, stored procedures, and UDFs. You'll debug and performance-tune queries written by others, often for massive datasets. This is your bread and butter for data extraction.

Expert in scikit-learn pipelines, advanced feature engineering, and hyperparameter tuning. You'll use libraries like XGBoost and LightGBM for more advanced tasks, and spaCy for natural language processing if needed. You'll write clean, modular, and version-controlled code.

BI & Visualization (Tableau, Power BI) Advanced

Creating complex, interactive dashboards with multiple data sources, calculated fields, and level-of-detail expressions (LODs). You'll tell a compelling story with data, going beyond basic charts to reveal deeper insights for stakeholders.

Big Data Platforms (Databricks, Snowflake) Advanced

Developing and optimising Spark jobs in Databricks for large-scale data processing. You'll design data ingestion and transformation pipelines, and manage data warehousing performance and cost in Snowflake for your projects.

Cloud ML Platforms (AWS SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning Studio) Advanced

Using the SDKs (e.g., Boto3 for AWS) to programmatically build, train, and deploy models. You'll implement MLOps principles for model monitoring, retraining, and versioning in a production environment.

Version Control (Git/GitHub) Advanced

Managing complex branching strategies (e.g., GitFlow), conducting thorough code reviews for junior team members, and using Git hooks for automation. You'll be a go-to person for best practices.

5What you get to decide, and how that grows

Power in a job isn't your title. It's what you're allowed to decide. Here's how it grows as you move up.

The choiceComing in Where you are nowThe step above
Project Scope & Objectives Follows pre-defined scope. Escalates any deviations. Proposes minor scope adjustments for routine tasks. Seeks approval for changes. Defines project scope and objectives for workstreams in consultation with stakeholders. Negotiates trade-offs and secures agreement.
Technical Approach & Methodology Uses prescribed algorithms and tools. Seeks guidance for alternative approaches. Selects appropriate algorithms and tools for routine problems. Proposes new methods with justification. Designs and justifies complex model architectures and data mining methodologies. Evaluates and recommends new tools/techniques for team adoption.
Data Acquisition & Preparation Works with pre-prepared datasets. Flags data quality issues. Independently performs data cleaning and transformation. Proposes new data sources. Defines data requirements for projects. Collaborates with Data Engineering on new pipeline development. Makes decisions on data imputation strategies.
Stakeholder Communication & Reporting Prepares standard reports under supervision. Answers direct questions. Presents findings for routine analyses. Handles basic Q&A. Leads presentations to senior business stakeholders. Translates complex insights into actionable recommendations. Manages difficult questions and expectations.
Mentorship & Team Contribution Asks questions and learns from others. Provides informal guidance to new joiners on basic tasks. Actively mentors 1-2 junior analysts, providing structured guidance, code reviews, and technical support. Contributes to team knowledge base and best practices.

6How you'll be judged

The scoreboard, and what is not on it. The hard targets, how often each is actually looked at, and the quiet signals that never reach a dashboard.

Project ROI/Impact
The measurable financial benefit or cost saving delivered by your data mining projects.
Target · Deliver projects with a documented >£250K annual impact (cost savings or revenue uplift).

Your customer churn prediction model reduced churn by 0.5% in Q2, leading to an estimated £300K in retained revenue.

Model Performance & Stability
The accuracy, precision, and recall of your deployed models, alongside their stability over time (minimal drift).
Target · Maintain deployed model performance within 90% of initial validation metrics for at least 6 months post-deployment.

Your fraud detection model consistently identifies >85% of fraudulent transactions with a false positive rate below 2%, without significant degradation over the last two quarters.

Process Improvement & Automation
The efficiency gains achieved by automating data preparation, model training, or reporting processes.
Target · Automate at least one significant manual process per quarter, saving the team 20+ hours monthly.

You scripted the data ingestion and cleaning for the sales forecast model, reducing manual prep time from 3 days to 4 hours each month – that's a huge win for everyone.

Mentee Development & Growth
The progress and skill development of junior analysts you mentor.
Target · Successfully mentor 1-2 junior analysts, leading to demonstrable skill improvement and readiness for more complex tasks within 12-18 months.

Your mentee, Sarah, can now independently build and validate a regression model, something she couldn't do six months ago, thanks to your guidance.

Stakeholder Influence & Trust
How effectively you build relationships and influence key business stakeholders to adopt data-driven approaches and trust your recommendations.
  • Stakeholders proactively seek your input on strategic decisions
  • your recommendations are consistently adopted
  • you're invited to early-stage planning meetings for new initiatives
  • positive feedback in informal conversations and formal reviews.
Solution Design & Robustness
The quality, scalability, and maintainability of the data mining solutions you design and implement.
  • Your solutions are well-documented and easily understood by others
  • they handle edge cases gracefully
  • they integrate smoothly with existing systems
  • minimal post-deployment bugs or performance issues
  • positive feedback from Data Engineering and business users.
Knowledge Sharing & Best Practices
Your contribution to improving the team's overall data mining capabilities and adopting best practices.
  • You regularly contribute to internal knowledge bases
  • you lead technical discussions or workshops
  • you introduce new, effective methodologies or tools
  • your code sets a high standard for readability and efficiency
  • you actively participate in code reviews, offering constructive feedback.
Problem Framing & Scoping
Your ability to take vague business problems and translate them into clear, solvable data mining challenges with well-defined objectives.
  • Projects you lead start with clear problem statements and success metrics
  • you challenge assumptions politely but firmly
  • you identify potential data limitations early
  • stakeholders feel heard and understand the scope of the analytical work before it begins.

7Would you like it

Both sides. What people enjoy, and what grinds them down.

What people enjoy
Solving Hard, Unstructured Problems

You'll be given a business challenge, not a pre-defined query. Your day will involve a lot of thinking, experimenting, and iterating to find the best analytical approach. You're trying to figure out 'why' something is happening, not just 'what'.

Instead of being asked for 'customer demographics', you're asked 'Why are our high-value customers churning?' – the fun is in figuring out how to answer that.

Seeing Tangible Business Impact

Your models and insights won't just sit in a Jupyter notebook. You'll work to get them deployed and see their direct effect on things like revenue, customer retention, or operational efficiency. You're not just building; you're delivering value.

Your predictive model for inventory optimisation actually gets used by the Operations team, leading to a 10% reduction in warehousing costs. That's a direct win you can point to.

Continuous Learning & Technical Depth

The data mining landscape changes constantly. You'll be expected to keep up with new algorithms, tools, and best practices. We encourage experimenting with new techniques and sharing what you learn. There's always a deeper level to explore in the data and the tech.

You might spend Friday afternoons experimenting with a new gradient boosting library or diving into the latest research paper on anomaly detection, because you genuinely want to improve your craft.

What frustrates people
  • Spending 80% of your time on data cleaning and preparation ('data janitor' work) instead of actual modelling, because the data is just that messy.
  • Stakeholders changing requirements or asking for a 'completely different slice' of the data after you've already spent a week building the model and analysis.
  • The constant pressure to find data that supports a pre-existing conclusion, forcing a conflict between analytical integrity and internal politics.
  • Having your perfectly good model stuck in 'deployment purgatory' for months, waiting for engineering resources to put it into production.
  • Explaining, for the fifth time this week, why correlation does not equal causation to intelligent, non-technical colleagues.
  • Your carefully planned sprint being completely derailed by a last-minute, 'emergency' data pull request from an executive for a board meeting tomorrow.
What this role does not give you
  • A perfectly structured, predictable work environment with zero ambiguity.
  • Guaranteed deployment for every single model or analysis you produce.
  • A role where you only deal with clean, perfectly curated datasets.
  • A 'hands-off' approach to stakeholder management; you'll be in the thick of it.
  • A purely academic research role; this is about commercial impact.

8Who you work with

This role directly drives the quality and depth of our data-driven decision-making. Your work will influence strategic initiatives across product development, customer engagement, operational efficiency, and risk management. You're essentially building the intelligence layer that helps the business navigate complex challenges and identify new opportunities, often leading to measurable revenue growth or significant cost savings. Get it right, and we're ahead of the curve; get it wrong, and we're making expensive mistakes.

Inside the business
  • Product Management Leads
  • Marketing & Sales Directors
  • Operations Managers
  • Finance Business Partners
  • Data Engineering Team Leads
  • Senior Leadership (e.g., VPs of relevant business units)
Outside the business
  • Key Vendors (e.g., cloud platform providers)
  • External Consultants (on specific projects)
  • Industry Peers (for best practice sharing)

9What you need before you start

Not a wish list. The things you would be expected to already have.

  • You've independently led at least 3-5 end-to-end data mining projects from problem definition to deployment.
  • You can demonstrate a strong portfolio of Python-based data mining solutions, including complex feature engineering and model tuning.
  • You're comfortable writing and optimising SQL queries for large, complex datasets without constant supervision.
  • You've got a solid understanding of statistical inference and can confidently interpret A/B test results and model metrics.
  • You've mentored junior colleagues or contributed significantly to team knowledge sharing in previous roles.
  • You can articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences in a clear, concise, and compelling way.

10What to practise next

Where the job is going, and what to do about it starting this week.

Advanced MLOps & Productionisation

It's not enough to just build a great model; you need to know how to get it into production reliably, monitor its performance, and ensure it stays relevant. The gap between 'notebook' and 'production' is where a lot of value gets lost.

Model Registries & Versioning · CI/CD for ML · Drift Detection & Retraining Strategies · Containerisation (Docker) & Orchestration (Kubernetes basics)

  • This week: Review our current MLOps practices and identify one area for improvement.
  • This month: Work with Data Engineering to deploy a simple model using our existing CI/CD pipeline.
  • Month 2: Research and propose a strategy for automated model monitoring and drift detection for one of your deployed models.
  • Month 3: Take an online course on Docker and Kubernetes basics, focusing on their application in ML deployment.

Quick win: Ensure all your current models have clear versioning and are documented in a central registry, even if it's just a shared spreadsheet for now.

Graph Analytics & Network Science

Many real-world problems involve relationships (e.g., social networks, transaction graphs, supply chains). Traditional tabular data methods struggle here. Understanding graph structures can unlock new insights, especially in fraud detection or customer journey analysis.

Graph Data Structures · Centrality Measures · Community Detection Algorithms · Graph Databases (e.g., Neo4j basics)

  • This week: Read an introductory book or online course on network science and graph theory.
  • This month: Find a dataset with relational aspects (e.g., customer interactions, product co-purchases) and try to build a simple graph.
  • Month 2: Experiment with a Python library like NetworkX to calculate centrality measures or detect communities.
  • Month 3: Propose a business problem where graph analytics could provide a unique solution, perhaps for fraud detection or customer segmentation.

Quick win: Identify one business problem where relationships between entities are key (e.g., how customers refer each other) and think about how you might represent that as a graph.

11Staying current once you are in

What people here do to keep up
  • Regularly participate in online courses (Coursera, Udacity, edX) focusing on advanced machine learning, deep learning, or MLOps.
  • Attend industry conferences (e.g., PyData, ODSC, KDD) to stay current with the latest trends and network with peers.
  • Contribute to open-source data science projects or maintain a personal GitHub portfolio demonstrating your skills.
  • Actively engage in data science competitions (e.g., Kaggle) to hone your problem-solving and modelling skills on diverse datasets.
  • Read academic papers and technical blogs to keep up with new algorithms and research, and share interesting findings with the team.
  • Seek out opportunities to mentor junior colleagues, as teaching is one of the best ways to solidify your own understanding.

12The rising capability

The rising capability

Zavmo analysis

What's rising in its place

This is where the work is heading, and the higher pay with it. Get fluent here and the shift stops being a threat and starts being your edge.

Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration

Honestly, competitors are already using large language models (LLMs) to draft reports in 10 minutes that used to take 2 hours. Analysts who figure this out will outproduce their peers by a factor of 3:1. It's not just about asking questions; it's about asking the right questions to get useful outputs.

  • Context Windows & Token Limits
  • Temperature Settings
  • RAG Architectures
  • Output Validation & Hallucination Detection
  • Prompt Chaining

Explainable AI (XAI) Techniques

As models get more complex, business stakeholders (and regulators) are increasingly asking 'Why did the model make that decision?' Simply saying 'the algorithm said so' isn't good enough anymore. You'll need to open the black box.

  • SHAP & LIME
  • Partial Dependence Plots (PDPs)
  • Feature Importance Beyond Coefficients
  • Counterfactual Explanations

13What you’ll use

What you’ll use

Skills this role draws on

Technical

  • Predictive Modelling
  • Clustering & Segmentation
  • Association Rule Mining
  • Feature Engineering & Selection
  • ETL/ELT Design Principles
  • Statistical Hypothesis Testing

14The pathway

The pathway

How you actually get there, here

How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.

  1. 1

    From Data Mining Specialist (L2)

    2-3 years at L2

    Skills to master

    • Taking full ownership of projects, proactive stakeholder management, effective mentorship, and designing more complex models independently.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Consistently delivering high-quality analytical projects with minimal supervision.
    • Demonstrating the ability to troubleshoot complex data and model issues independently.
    • Receiving positive feedback on informal guidance provided to new team members.
    • Proactively identifying and proposing solutions to business problems, not just executing requests.
  2. 2

    From Senior Data Analyst

    3-5 years as a Senior Data Analyst

    Skills to master

    • Transitioning from descriptive/diagnostic analytics to predictive/prescriptive modelling, deep machine learning expertise, and productionisation of models.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Strong SQL and Python skills, with a focus on statistical modelling and ML libraries.
    • Experience in designing and interpreting A/B tests and other experiments.
    • Ability to translate complex business questions into analytical frameworks.
    • A portfolio of projects that demonstrate model building and validation, not just reporting.
  3. 3

    From Machine Learning Engineer (Data Focus)

    2-4 years as an MLE

    Skills to master

    • Developing stronger business acumen, advanced statistical modelling beyond deep learning, and communicating insights to non-technical audiences.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Proficiency in building and deploying ML pipelines in production.
    • A solid understanding of various ML algorithms and their appropriate use cases.
    • Demonstrated ability to work closely with data scientists on model development and refinement.
    • Interest in the 'why' behind the data and its business implications, not just the 'how' of deployment.

15Where this role leads

The long view: This work can lead towards deep technical specialism or towards broader leadership, depending on which direction you want to take it.

The ten Future Fluencies

Zavmo analysis

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

A qualification proves you can do the job as it's defined today. These ten are what decide whether you're still the obvious person for it in five years. They're the capabilities employers are now writing into senior roles faster than people are learning them. Zavmo weaves them through whatever you study, so you come out with both: the credential and the fluency.

The highlighted ones are the Fluencies your role leans on hardest, from how Senior Data Mining Specialist is actually changing.

How you would learn this

One to one, on the work you already do

A tutor sets the task against your own job and marks the reasoning, at your pace. There is no cohort to fall behind.

A lesson from Data Analytics, worked against Senior Data Mining Specialist.

Data Analytics Level 5

Applied to your work in Senior Data Mining Specialist

The objective of this unit is to enable learners to understand and apply data analytics techniques for decision-making. Learners will be able to apply descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytic methods, utilising statistical methods, to convert raw data into actionable insights and determine the best course of action.

How the thinking builds
  1. 1 Remember
  2. 2 Understand
  3. 3 Apply
  4. 4 Analyse
  5. 5 Evaluate
  6. 6 Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.

It is £70 a month, billed monthly. Your free first module is Future Fluency, and you can cancel any time.

See Your Progress Grow Illustration
Senior Data Mining Specialist
  • Predictive Modelling
  • Clustering & Segmentation
  • Association Rule Mining
  • Feature Engineering & Selection
  • ETL/ELT Design Principles
  • Statistical Hypothesis Testing
This is your Mind Palace on learn.zavmo.ai. Every skill above comes from this role's own record, not an example borrowed from another job. A node lights up when you evidence it, and what you build stays yours between jobs. That is the part a course cannot do.

16The detail, folded away

Everything else the record holds

The career branches in full, how AI is already showing up in the day-to-day, and the questions people ask about this job. Here when you want them, out of the way while you decide.

Where it leads next, rung by rung

Where it leads

The career path, and where it branches

Senior Data Mining Specialist is a start, not a ceiling. Each step below asks for new skills and hands back more autonomy.

  1. You'll move from leading individual workstreams to architecting entire analytical programmes or leading a small team of 3-5 analysts. Your scope expands significantly.

    • Designing enterprise-level data mining frameworks and solutions.
    • Evaluating and selecting new big data technologies and ML platforms.
    • Implementing robust MLOps strategies across multiple projects.
    • Influencing technical direction at a broader departmental level.
  2. Data Mining Specialist Manager (L5 - Management Track)

    4-6 years

    This path shifts your focus from hands-on technical work to leading and developing a larger team (10-25 people, potentially including other managers). You'll be responsible for the team's overall delivery and strategic alignment.

    • Defining the vision and strategy for the entire data mining department.
    • Building and scaling organisational data mining capabilities.
    • Managing vendor relationships and external partnerships.
    • Driving cultural change towards data-driven decision-making across the organisation.
Working with AI on the job

Working with AI

Where AI is starting to help

Let's be real, a lot of what we do as Data Mining Specialists is repetitive. Cleaning data, drafting summaries, even writing boilerplate code. What if you could offload a significant chunk of that to AI? You'd have more time for the truly interesting stuff: deep analysis, complex modelling, and actually solving business problems. That's exactly what our AI Productivity Hub aims to do for you.

For a Senior Data Mining Specialist, AI isn't about replacing you; it's about making you a superhero. Imagine spending less time on the grunt work and more time on strategic thinking, model innovation, and delivering high-impact insights. Our internal AI tools and recommended external platforms are designed to amplify your capabilities, letting you focus on the 'why' and 'what next' rather than the 'how to type this out'.

Code Automation & Debugging

Use AI copilots (like GitHub Copilot or similar in your IDE) to auto-generate Python or SQL code snippets for common tasks – think data cleaning functions, feature engineering steps, or complex joins. It can also help debug your code by suggesting fixes or explaining errors, saving you hours of head-scratching.

Hypothesis & Feature Generation

Feed your dataset schema and a business problem to a Large Language Model (LLM). Ask it to brainstorm potential hypotheses to test or suggest new, creative features you could engineer from your raw data. For example, 'Given customer transaction data, what 10 features could predict churn?' It's like having a brainstorming partner on demand.

Algorithm Research & Summarisation

When you're faced with a novel problem or need to understand a new technique, use AI to quickly research and summarise the latest academic papers or technical blogs on relevant data mining algorithms. Ask it to explain a complex concept like 'Hierarchical DBSCAN' in simple terms, perhaps with Python code examples. Cut down your research time dramatically.

Stakeholder Report Drafting

After you've done the hard analytical work, provide your key charts and bullet-point findings to an AI assistant. Ask it to draft a non-technical summary presentation or an email for business stakeholders. It can translate statistical jargon into clear, impactful business language, saving you significant time on communication.

Common questions

Common questions

How do you become a Senior Data Mining Specialist?

Common routes in include From Data Mining Specialist (2-3 years at L2), From Senior Data Analyst (3-5 years as a Senior Data Analyst) and From Machine Learning Engineer (Data Focus) (2-4 years as an MLE). Times vary with prior experience.

Where can a Senior Data Mining Specialist progress to?

This role can lead on to Lead Data Mining Specialist (3-5 years) and Data Mining Specialist Manager (4-6 years), depending on the skills you build.

What new skills matter most for a Senior Data Mining Specialist?

Increasingly, Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration and Explainable AI (XAI) Techniques. These are the skills our record of this role lists as growing.

Free tools

Want a read on where you stand?

Three free tools, no account needed. Each one ends with a role, a level and a way in.

17Where to go from here

Other roles at Level 5

Same depth of qualification, different job. Useful if the work appeals but this particular role does not.

More jobs in technology and data

Stay in the field you know and move sideways rather than up.

If you leave this industry

The skills involved carry across roles in data science, machine learning engineering, and product management, for anyone who builds a strong sense of how products work. They also carry across industries, from finance and healthcare to retail and entertainment. Extracting value from data is useful wherever data exists.

This role profile is © 2026 Growth Engineering Technologies Ltd. Built from UK occupational standards and regulated qualification data, and written for Zavmo.

You're not behind. You're right on time. The shift is only just beginning. Your role won't look the same in two years. Be the one who leads the change, not the one it happens to. Start my Senior Data Mining Specialist plan, free What happens next: a free account, then we build your plan as you set up. No card. Build your plan, see your roadmap and meet the twelve tutors matched to you. All free. When you're ready to start learning, it's £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.