Data Scientist

How to Apply

A cover letter is required for consideration for this position and should be attached as the first page of your resume. The cover letter should address your specific interest in the position, include your salary requirements, and outline skills and experience that directly relate to this position.

Job Summary

The University of Michigan is seeking an expert in data collection, analysis, modeling, and inference to become an active member of The Digital Innovation Greenhouse (DIG) team within the Office of Academic Innovation (formerly the Office of Digital Education & Innovation). The DIG team combines expertise in software development, behavioral science, and pedagogy with a passion for change. We work to make a University of Michigan education more personalized, engaged, and lifelong. DIG is an innovation accelerator, using agile methods to grow good education technologies from invention to infrastructure (Read more about DIG’s Guiding Principles). All DIG tools rely, in an essential way, on inferences drawn from data: our success will be determined in large part by the quality of our data science.

DIG’s current projects include ECoach, which provides personalized feedback, encouragement, and advice to tens of thousands of students, ART 2.0, which provides data-driven decision support to students, faculty and staff, Student Explorer, which supports academic advisors with real-time information about student performance, GradeCraft, a platform for gameful course design, and MWrite, a system for implementing writing-to-learn strategies in high enrollment introductory STEM courses. All of these projects are entering a period of major expansion: DIG’s statistician will work each team to evaluate the tools and support their successful growth.

In developing these tools, the DIG team works in close collaboration with a vibrant collection of innovators drawn from the University of Michigan’s world class students, faculty, and staff. This position provides the opportunity to work directly with world leaders in data science, causal inference, and education research, producing tools which will transform higher education for the 21st century.

Responsibilities*

• Work with project teams to design and develop digital applications that enhance the residential education experience and facilitate engaged and personalized learning at the University of Michigan.
• Enhance internal research capabilities within DIG to leverage research findings for feature development and overall tool refinement.
• Gather, analyze and interpret data from various sources that will suggest conclusions and support decision-making in DIG tools. Analyses may be specific and problem-focused, or open-ended and exploratory; they may be ad hoc, or recurring.
• Apply the best available techniques to the task of drawing inference from data.
• Manage data: inspect, clean, and transform data. Run database queries and provide datasets to DIG team members and clients.
• Maintain large data sets: merge files, restructure and recode variables, assign labels and values, check for errors, create codebooks, etc.
• Develop, streamline, error-proof, and automate processes for managing data and producing reports.
• Prepare and present reports and findings to teammates, faculty innovators, and advisory boards.
• Act as a liaison between DIG and various research partners and advisory boards.

Required Qualifications*

• A bachelor’s degree in data science, statistics, informatics, econometrics, or a recognized field of science directly related to the data science tasks required for this position.
• Significant experience with R software (or SAS or SPSS or STATA).
• Experience with MySQL, Oracle, or other databases.
• Experience with SQL and constructing SQL queries.
• Knowledge of, and experience with, various statistical analysis techniques, such as analyses of variance, factor analyses, reliability analyses, statistical processes control, linear and hierarchical modeling, etc. Knowledge of advanced techniques is a plus.
• Demonstrated ability to be self-directed and work independently or as part of a multicultural and collaborative environment.
• Demonstrated ability to be flexible and work well in an environment with rapidly changing requirements and priorities.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate with various faculty and members of a comprehensive team.
• Strong attention to detail.
• An innovative nature and a desire to find better and more efficient ways of streamlining, standardizing, and error-proofing data, data files, tables, data sharing, and reports.
• Strong instincts for reviewing outputs and for discovering, correcting, and preventing data errors.

Desired Qualifications*

• Master’s degree preferred.
• Experience with Python programming language.
• Experience with data visualizations for a non-statistical audience.
• Experience with statistical, linguistic, and structural techniques to extract and classify information from textual sources.
• Familiarity with Peoplesoft and UM’s Data Warehouse.

Additional Information

NOTE: This is a three-year, term-limited position.

Excellent benefits are available, for details, see http://benefits.umich.edu/.

Position receives 24 days of vacation a year, and 15 days of sick leave a year with provisions for extended benefits, as well as opportunities for professional development and travel. TIAA-CREF and Fidelity Investments retirement options available.

Background Screening

The University of Michigan conducts background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer and may use a third party administrator to conduct background checks. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Application Deadline

Job openings are posted for a minimum of seven calendar days. This job may be removed from posting boards and filled anytime after the minimum posting period has ended.

Decision Making Process

Applications will be reviewed as received throughout the posting period and continue until the position is filled.

U-M EEO/AA Statement

The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.