Senior Data Scientist
American Institutes for Research (AIR)
Overview:
The American Institutes for Research is the leading education research company in the nation providing a continuum of education research, assessment, technical assistance and policy analysis from the school level up to the national and international levels. Our programs apply science to address real world issues on behalf of clients that include federal and state agencies, international development agencies, leading foundations, school districts and private businesses and our experts are a frequent source of information and guidance for policymakers, clients and the news media.
The Center for Survey and Data Sciences at AIR is seeking a Senior Data Scientist. The data scientists have the opportunity to:
- Collaborate with researchers from a variety of disciplines and fields to acquire, process, and understand the data that clients need to make better decisions.
- Use R, Python and other programming languages and analytic tools to develop models that “tell the story” and predict social behavior and outcomes.
- Creatively and independently explore new approaches to behavioral and social science research and evaluation that will improve peoples’ lives.
Responsibilities:
The Sr. Data Scientist will work on several projects that may include responsibilities to:
- Create structured datasets from large, unstructured data “in the wild,” that describe peoples’ activities, behavior, social networks and communication, as well as other social phenomena
- Develop new or implement existing algorithms for record linkage across disparate datasets
- Collect, parse and analyze text and other data from websites and other sources using APIs and programming
- Analyze and interpret experimental data
- Design, validate, and visualize data-driven models, including machine learning approaches, to understand social and behavioral phenomena in support of AIR’s mission to improve education, health and the workforce
- Support and collaborate with experts in a variety of disciplines and fields to pioneer new approaches to research by integrating diverse data sources
- Communicate findings to project teams and other technical and non-technical collaborators
- Comprehensively document all work to support an open research community
- Develop academic papers
Senior Data Scientists may also be called upon to:
- Lead the efforts to secure external funds from federal, state, local and private sources to support the Center’s research, development, and service programs
- Advise and support data science projects
- Manage project budgets and personnel
- Represent the Center in the community and various academic and policy arenas
- Proactively engage in developing and implementing AIR’s quality assurance processes
- Develop and train others on best practices for data processing, analytics, and documentation methodology and results
Qualifications:
- A M.A. or Ph.D. from a statistics, mathematics, computer science, computational social science or operations research program is preferred. Advanced degrees from other programs will also be considered, provided candidates have significant statistical and computational experience and skills.
- Work experience in STEM or social science research field is a plus
- 5+ years of relevant work experience compiling and analyzing complex, high volume, high dimensional datasets for economics or other social science research
- 2+ years of experience using R, Perl, Python, Java, or other languages appropriate for large scale data analysis
- Extensive experience with relational databases and SQL
- Sufficient experience with machine learning techniques to be able direct and implement such tasks and/or projects in support of AIR’s mission for social good
- Ability to communicate complex quantitative analysis in a clear, precise, and actionable manner to non-technical audiences, management and experts in non-data fields.
- Strong organizational and interpersonal skills
AIR offers an excellent compensation and benefits package, including a fully funded retirement plan, generous paid time off, commuter benefits, and tuition assistance. For more information, please visit our website at www.air.org. To apply, please go to https://jobs-airdc.icims.com/jobs/8639/senior-data-scientist/job. EOE.
Full Time