As I looked up in shock from my desk I saw myself sitting across from me…my colleague was testing his new face verification algorithm wearing a mask of my face. Zen masters have talked about finding yourself, but I’m pretty sure this was not what they intended. When my heart rate slowly returned to normal I decided it was probably best to drink decaf for the rest of the day. Now I expect that the mention of decaf is strike-1 for many of you coffee aficionados, but it was fancy decaf if that makes it any better (I expect not).

In Daon there are several biometric research veins (pun intended) such as face, finger, palm and voice to name but a few. We also do some interesting work in behavioural biometrics and digital on-boarding too. The research team is comprised of a principle research scientist reporting to the CTO where the rest of the team is made up of several senior researchers, junior researchers, and research assistants. This team is also enabled and supported by several other engineering teams as required. This support is extremely helpful in creating the headspace a researcher needs to approach a solution to a problem, that and donuts, definitely donuts.

Whilst Daon has several S.W.A.T. teams ranging across sales, professional services/support, legal, DevOps and Engineering, I’ll give a little insight into one of my days on the research team. Recently, I had just finished a 2-month sprint to retrain new voice biometric models for a more challenging acoustic environment and the returning accuracy was good enough to be passed up the management chain. However, being research, the outcome from that sprint was not always a given. To help manage expectations and progress, several milestones that were determined during the planning phase were incorporated into that sprint to help gauge its progress.

While everyone likes a win, it’s not always certain that every research sprint will lead to a direct win for the company, but as any good researcher worth their salt will tell you that progress can still be made…one step closer to the finish line! An alternative ending to that sprint could have been a requirement of additional resources and another two months to better address the problem where the milestones along the way would have given forewarning to this result.

So what are Daon looking for in potential candidates? Well that depends on the role whether it be junior/graduate entry level or senior. For seniors we expect that you are joining Daon already vaccinated against avoidable mistakes as you have gained this experience already. For both juniors and seniors, we expect honesty and for you to be open and embrace your weaknesses so that we can draw upon the strengths of others in the team to still achieve progress.

So that was Daon by day, so what about Daon employees by night? We are a varied bunch from mums, dads, squash/badminton players, runners, bakers, home brewers, musicians, knitters, jugglers, and gamers  Why not add your distinctiveness to our own.