Data Science Lead

Summary

Join the Democratic National Committee’s Tech Team as their new Data Science Lead. In this role, you will lead the data science team, manage strategic initiatives, and collaborate with other data professionals. You will be responsible for the technical design and implementation of predictive models, as well as coaching and developing the data science team. This position requires experience in leading data science teams, deploying machine learning models, and working with political data. The ideal candidate will be a strong communicator and collaborator, comfortable working in a remote environment. The DNC offers a competitive salary and a generous benefits package.

Requirements

• You’ve led data science humans, offering both technical mentorship and strategic direction
• You’ve deployed machine learning or statistical models into production environments at scale and can articulate benefits and tradeoffs of different approaches
• You have experience doing data science or statistics in a social sciences or business context, which may include electoral politics
• You value collaboration and work best when you’re partnering with a diverse, distributed team to solve interesting problems together
• You code comfortably in Python and/or R, and know how to leverage standard libraries/ modules (eg: ggplot2, matplotlib) or develop a custom approach
• You’re fluent in SQL and have worked in modern cloud data environments (GCP, BigQuery, Airflow, dbt, etc.)
• You have experience using cloud computing platforms and their ML services (such as BigQuery ML/Vertex AI on GCP, Sagemaker on AWS, or Azure) or using machine learning infrastructure built on open-source tools (e.g. MLflow or Tensorflow)
• You’re an excellent communicator and have experience explaining technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• You won’t just be building data science products, but you’ll be helping us ensure our diverse users trust them and know how to use them for their individual needs

Responsibilities

• Serve as a technical lead for the design, implementation and continuous improvement of the DNC’s predictive models that enrich the database of voters across the country
• From statistical methodology to machine learning infrastructure, you will be the subject matter expert on production-level data science for the Democratic party
• Be the people manager for the Data Scientists on our team (currently one Senior Data Scientist) responsible for coaching and development
• Where the Product Manager will be responsible for the “what” of our work, you will be responsible for the “how”
• As a manager on the Tech team, we will look to you to advance a healthy, inclusive, and user-centric team culture
• As a data science leader for the ecosystem at large, we’ll look to you to develop and execute on a vision for how data science can improve the effectiveness of Democratic candidates and state parties
• You’ll also work with data science vendors to support both DNC modeling needs by managing relationships and contracts

Preferred Qualifications

• Have a PhD or MS in a relevant discipline (statistics, data science, machine learning, mathematics, information science, computer science, political science, demography, etc.)
• Have experience in expertise with polling or survey-based modeling and advanced sampling/weighting techniques
• Have experience using pipeline orchestration tools (e.g. Airflow, Dagster)
• Have experience using data analysis/visualization tools (e.g. Shiny, Excel/Sheets, Tableau, Looker)
• Have experience working with vendors including relationship management, technical validation and budgetary oversight
• Have experience working with political data like state voter files, election results, or data on voter, volunteer, or donor engagement and/or the DNC’s data and analytics tools, including experience doing analysis in our BigQuery-based data warehouse (Phoenix) or exposure to political CRMs (e.g. VoteBuilder, NGP VAN, BSD)
• Understand the role data can play in political program planning; you think of analysis through the lens of the decisions it will inform, and are deeply focused on asking the right questions before you dive into the weeds of any particular analysis

Benefits

• Generous paid time off, including federal holidays and open leave
• Health and dental insurance for employee and dependents; 90% paid by the DNC, 10% paid by employee
• Supplementary vision plans available to employees for purchase
• Up to a 5% employer match DNC 401(k) plan
• Pre-tax flexible spending account benefits available to employees and dependents