Senior Data Scientist
JOB DETAIL
The Foundation
We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.
The Team
As part of the IT Enterprise Data Solutions department, the Knowledge Management (KM) and Data Science team is focused on analytics & insights from our knowledge assets – whether data or documents, both operational and programmatic. Our mission is to provide innovative data solutions that support the strategic mission of the foundation, enable data-driven decision making across diverse operations and program teams, and ensure the responsible use of data.
The KM and Data Science team delivers data management, information visualization, and advanced analytics support across the foundation while also pioneering the advancement of AI-powered KM and Data Science within the organization. Leveraging advanced data analytics technologies to deliver knowledge and insights from data, the KM and Data Science team supports all aspects of the philanthropic mission of the foundation.
Your Role
As our new Senior Data Scientist, you will collaborate closely with operations and program teams to drive data analytics planning and execution. Key responsibilities include performing data profiling, conducting dimensional feature analysis, and applying a hypothesis-driven approach to uncover critical insights. This role will play a pivotal part in AI initiatives, ensuring that data-driven insights contribute to impactful project outcomes.
Focused on maximizing project value, you will identify key drivers of operational challenges and opportunities. You will work with cross-functional teams to pinpoint relevant data for interventions, assess their impact, and establish measures, learnings, and evaluation metrics.
You will build and maintain strong partnerships with both business and technical teams, serving as a trusted expert in data analytics. You will guide project planning, identify functional and non-functional requirements, and support the development of innovative solutions in data visualization, predictive modeling, and advanced analytics.
What You’ll Do
- Understand customer requirements for how program data is used to make decisions. Including process mapping, workflow optimization, and technology enablement.
- Assist internal partners with analytics strategy planning, technical architecture, and ensure teams follow best practices regarding legal and information security policies.
- Apply strong data science expertise and systems analysis methodology to help guide solution analysis, with consideration of both technical and non-technical implications and trade-offs.
- Extract data from various data sources; perform exploratory data analysis, cleanse, transform, and aggregate data.
- Use statistical, machine learning techniques to build models that deliver business needs while promoting and demonstrating the value of sophisticated analytics techniques.
- Pilot development of AI initiatives including Retrieval Augmented Generation applications, model selection, iterative prompt engineering and fine-tuning based on accuracy and user-feedback, monitoring and governance.
- Collaborate with peer data scientists, statisticians, and business analysts to identify business data problems and implement effective solutions.
- Assess the effectiveness and accuracy of new data sources and optimize data gathering techniques.
- Lead and own technical engagement with identified program teams, developing positive relationships based on trust, transparency, and delivery.
- Coordinate and lead demos, user acceptance reviews while working with the technical team on the creation of design documents and artifacts.
- May drive the project delivery of smaller projects, lead responsibility for multiple analysis work streams within projects of significant size and impact.
- Collaborate with other staff to deliver new, innovative solutions to the foundation data users by providing thought leadership while facilitating participation in data communities at the foundation.
Your Experience
- Masters degree in Data Science, Data Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Engineering, Statistics, or related field, or equivalent working experience.
- 5+ years of experience in a Data Science role, with advanced work in Computer Science, Statistics, Informatics, Information Systems or another quantitative field preferred.
- 5+ years working in a customer-facing role interacting with business users, Data Analysts, and Data Scientists.
- 5+ years using R or Python to manipulate data and draw insights from large data sets.
- Experience independently exploring quick proof-of-concept solutions using data science, machine learning, and/or AI
- Experience with Databricks for collaborative data science development workspaces and notebook-driven scripting is a plus.
- Proven track record of being part of a small team delivering efficient data solutions or services designed around diverse customer needs.
- Knowledge of a variety of ML techniques (clustering, decision tree learning, artificial neural networks, etc.) as well as statistical techniques (regression, properties of distributions, statistical tests and proper usage, etc.) and their real-world advantages and/or drawbacks.
- A drive to learn and master new technologies and techniques. Strong problem-solving skills with an emphasis on data and domain exploration.
- Familiarity with NLP concepts, large language models and prompt engineering.
- Knowledge of ethics in AI and responsible AI development
- Experience working in cloud environments for data science workloads.
- Demonstrated experience in project delivery with an agile development methodology.
The salary range for this role is $137,500 to $206,200 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $149,800 to $224,600 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.
Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.
Hiring Requirements
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Candidate Accommodations
If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.
Inclusion Statement
We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.
All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.
