Senior Data Scientist

Overview

Senior Data Scientist role at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) within the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University.

HGSE is a diverse community of learners, teachers, and employees who are passionate about changing the world through education and striving for maximum impact in the field of education.

Design, plan, and implement software and data services that support and enrich research productivity and reliability. Develop software and data services with researchers to ensure that modern standards of reproducible research are kept.

HGSE is a diverse community of learners, teachers, and employees who are passionate about changing the world through education and striving for maximum impact in the field of education. The Senior Data Scientist at the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University leads statistical programming, collaborates with Principal Investigators to develop advanced models and analysis tools, develops data architecture and data processing pipelines, works with multiple stakeholders and develops visualizations to communicate key findings to non-technical audiences, and advises projects on state-of-the-art software and data solutions to support the research.

CEPR partners with school districts, charter school networks, and state education agencies to bring high quality research methods and data analysis to bear on strategic management and policy decisions. We design our work around the theory of action that if we bring together the right people, the right data, and the right analysis, significantly better decision-making will occur, and student outcomes will be improved.

The Senior Data Scientist reports to CEPR’s Director of Research who will identify specific projects and tasks that would benefit from the Senior Data Scientist’s expertise.

• Develops advanced models and performs complex statistical programming to support the research.
• Advises research projects on state-of-the-art technical solutions to analytic and data challenges.
• Translates complex analyses for policy and practitioner audiences and develop visualizations that help people understand key findings and new insights.
• Mentors research analysts on statistical programming and informally supervise the analyst on any tasks that the Senior Data Scientist assigns to them.
• Serves as a resource to the team for computer programming and statistics. Occasionally, group training on specific tools or models.
• Builds internal code design and development guides for future contributors.
• Conducts quality assurance to ensure the reproducibility of analyses, documentation of methods and algorithms, and use of appropriate statistical tests.
• Collaborates with Principal Investigators and Project Directors to develop research plans and statistical analyses.
• Contributes to papers and reports.

• Minimum of seven years’ post-secondary education or relevant work experience

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Statistics, Data Science, Economics, Mathematics, or a related field.
• 7+ years of relevant experience or post-secondary education.
• 3+ years’ experience in advanced statistical programming using Stata or R.
• Master’s degree preferred.
• 5+ years experience in statistical programming preferred.
• 3+ years experience supporting social science research projects preferred.
• Experience with Bayesian estimation, machine learning, natural language processing, cloud-based computing, and/or Artificial Intelligence strongly preferred.
• Experience with managing and analyzing large datasets, scaling processes, developing data architectures, and developing R packages preferred.
• Experience with version control software (such as Git), code reviews, and unit testing preferred.
• Ability to translate technical topics for non-technical audiences and to develop analyses and visualizations that convey key findings clearly.
• Demonstrated creative ability to solve challenges in novel ways using state-of-the-art statistical and data processing techniques.
• Experience working with K-12 or…