# RESEARCH DATA SCIENTIST

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https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rayid/jobs.html

## THE ALAN TURING INSTITUTE

The Alan Turing Institute is the national centre for data science and artificial intelligence,
established in 2015 with the mission to make great leaps in data science research to change the world for the better.

The Institute has cross-disciplinarity at its core; we bring researchers in mathematics and theoretical computer science,
statistics and machine learning, algorithms for data analytics and distributed computing, computational social science and
data ethics, and industry partners, to work together in an open and collaborative environment with a shared goal to generate
world-class research in data science.

Our researchers are motivated by driving impact, both through theoretical development and application to real-world problems.
In our first year we have identified eight challenge areas to focus our translational research:

* Fostering Government Innovation;
* Supercharging research in science and humanities;
* Designing computers for the next generation of algorithms;
* Making algorithmic systems fair, transparent and ethical;
* Shining a light on our economy;
* Managing security in an insecure world;
* Delivering safer, smarter engineering;
* Revolutionising Healthcare.

We invite you to join us as we grow our research community, supporting our goal to develop the next generation of
data science leaders, shape the public conversation, and push the boundaries of this new science for the public good.

## ADVERTISEMENT PREAMBLE

This is an outstanding opportunity for interdisciplinary researchers to bring cutting-edge
research ideas face to face with real-world problems.

The successful applicant may be appointed at senior level, depending on experience and skills

JOB TITLE Research Data Scientist or Research Software Engineer

LOCATION British Library, London

SALARY (£35-45,000 or £45-60,000 Senior or £Negotiable Principal)

HOURS Full time or Part-Time requests will be considered

CONTRACT TYPE Permanent

CLOSES Rolling Recruitment. Applications reviewed monthly.

## THE ROLE

The permanent research staff of the institute’s Research Engineering Group work to realise cutting edge research as professionally usable software tools and to apply these to address real-world data science and modelling challenges.

The group’s staff are research software engineers and data scientists.
We note the considerable overlap between these emerging roles and embrace the breadth of interdisciplinary skills and diversity of approaches entailed in these fields.
Staff can choose either job title, and change their choice as their career progresses.

In contrast to traditional research careers, we are committed expert collaborators, joining research teams to further the Institute's challenges.
We collaborate with scholars across the institute’s research community to enhance the applicability of research for particular problems.
We work with clients in industry, government and the third sector to turn their data challenges into research questions.
We value expertise across many domains and rely on this diversity to design tools, practices and systems to harness the power of data science around the world.

We create software and scripts that implement research and apply it to client data in a readable, reliable and reproducible fashion.
We present conclusions of research and analysis to the research community and clients through presentations, research papers, and interactive data visualisations.
We work with state of the art advanced high performance computing and cloud platforms to realise collaborators' data science and artificial intelligence research at scale.

We support the dissemination of research outputs through the publication and maintenance of open source research software packages.
We contribute to the sustainability of the open source ecosystem by adding features, fixing bugs, maintaining tools, and supporting community management in new and existing packages.

### Further details on the role

Successful candidates will:

1. Contribute to scoping, executing and sustainability planning for accelerated impact projects related to economic development, public health, education, environment, criminal justice, and international development, in partnership with techical and non-technical stakeholders;

2. Act as the technical lead during the DSSG Summer Program. This entails supervising the technical mentors, facilitating the fellows' work, and providing scientific oversight of the reports, public code and modelling outputs. The post will be based at one of the Turing-Institutes partner sites during the summer for 13 weeks (appropriate managerial and logistic support will be provided).

- mentors work with dedicated team of participants (3-4) and provide hands-on technical mentoring and data science expertise to the projects (2-3 each)
- each Mentor is teamed up with a Project Manager who leads the relationship with the project partner as well as makes sure the team is moving forward.
- Mentors also help us teach workshops and tutorials over the summer and are an integral part of the organizing team.

2. Supervise Data Study Group Principal Investigators. The latter is an opportunity for middle career researchers to scope and facilitate a Data Study Group Challenge. The candidate will be invited to join the DSG organising committee, to support the pre-exisiting quality assurance processes in partnership with the project manager and other senior academics.

1. In addition to above, succesful candidate will have **20%** of their time ring-fenced so that they can pursue their own resarch/software engineering interests.

1. Apply state-of-the-art and novel data science and artificial intelligence techniques emerging from the Institute and elsewhere to problems faced by the Turing’s clients
- Understand the problems of clients in the public, private and third sectors, and develop appropriate approaches to solving these problems.
- Understand which data are, or might be, available; and collect and manage this data.
- Perform analyses, which might include: building statistical models; applying machine learning techniques; building models and simulations; or applying optimisation techniques.
- Document processes for effective and efficient reuse across multiple domains.
1. Lead the development of open source software to enable the research and deployment of Machine Learning and AI for social good projects in collaboration with governments and nonprofits;.

1. Collaborate and provide support for an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, statisticians and social scientists to keep them focused on achieving specific project objectives and development tasks;

3. Contribute to the life of the Institute and support its community
- Deliver teaching and training to colleagues and students, including within the team in our regular skills sessions.
- Support research colleagues to make the most of the institute’s secure high performance computing environments for advanced research.

**TO CHECK: The successful candidate will be mainly working with the Data Study Group and Data Science for Social Good teams. Additionally the person will also be affiliated with Research Engineer Team this brings additional opportunities. The alignment between these responsibilities will be reviewed with the candidates preference after 1 year.**

==Below is from REG job not relevant most of which is merged in above ==

4. In addition, for senior staff only:
- Provide technical project management and leadership for 1-3 research projects, ensuring successful outcomes, liaising with clients and colleagues to understand and prioritise project goals, and balancing client value with research outputs.
- Line manage 1-3 other staff within the group, supporting their career development aspirations.
- Take ownership of a particular domain challenge area or methodology for the group.
- Develop new projects in conjunction with colleagues, authoring research proposals and agreeing involvement for the group in activities across the institute.
5. In addition, for principal staff only:
- Take strategic ownership for a significant area of departmental activity, as defined by the Principal's goals and interests.
- Line manage 1-4 Senior Staff
- Develop an independent profile as a senior researcher or practitioner within the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Community
- Contribute to the strategic leadership of the institute, reporting to the Director of Research Engineering
- Contribute to the national and international landscape of research and applications in their areas of interest.
While all these play a part, Principal staff are expected to play a large part in defining the scope of their own role, so the balance between each of these areas will be strongly influenced by their own career goals.

## PERSON SPECIFICATION

### ESSENTIAL

* Experience with Python Data Science Toolkit (Panda, NumPy, Matplotlib, Scikit-Learn, Beautiful Soup, statsmodels, sqlalchemy)
* Python software engineering experince including building, testing, deploying, and maintaining software;
* Experience with machine learning systems such as Hadoop, Hive, Pig, Spark, MapReduce, SageMaker
* experience with end-to-end data science workflows from ETL to analysis/modeling to prototyping to deployment;
* At least 3 years of professional experience in a field that utilizes modern day data science tools and methodologies
* Able to explain mathematical concepts involved in statistics, probability and linear algebra
* Experience with GitHub
* Experience working on social impact projects
* Has a passion for teaching/ has previously been a teacher, instructor, tutor or mentor (isa plus)
* Experience working on real-world problems and passion for making a social impact;

Candidates must be able to demonstrate, through examples, the below capabilities:

* A MSc degree
* Experience managing, structuring, and analysing research data.
* Experience managing and organising the parameters and results of computational experiments.
* An understanding of the importance of good practices for producing reliable software and reproducible analyses (e.g. git, issue tracking, automated testing, package management, literate analysis tools such as Jupyter and Rmarkdown)
* Demonstrated enthusiasm and ability to rapidly assimilate new computational and mathematical ideas and techniques on the job, at a more than superficial level, and apply them successfully.
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience in the visual representation of quantitative data, documentation of software packages or data resources, the authoring of research papers or technical reports, and giving presentations or classes on technical subjects.
* Ability to lead one’s own work independently, including planning and execution, and to collaborate productively as part of a team.

**Depending of preference of the candiate**

In addition, for senior staff only (this role should be senior level or principal depending on candidate ):
* Experience mentoring and evaluating the work of others (formal line management experience is not essential, but such applicants should be able to show significant evidence of informal mentorship.)
* Experience leading a project to a successful conclusion
* Demonstrable experience managing conflict and resolving stakeholder tensions
* **EITHER**
Experience in making or evaluating the case for new projects (e.g. authoring or evaluating research proposals or business cases)
**OR** Experience of managing, prioritising and resourcing a project portfolio.

In addition, for Principal staff only:
* A track record of leadership and independence in a personal area of interest within Data Science or Research Software Engineering.
* Proven experience of stakeholder management at a high level, including management of a personal network within the community.
* Proven experience of handling difficult issues in staff management and development, including both high fliers and those struggling.
* Demonstrable contribution to the development of alternative research roles.
* Demonstrable experience in influencing strategic decision making in organisations.

### DESIRABLE

We do not of course at all expect any candidate to have experience of all of the below! We are a learning team, combining many techniques and approaches to address our projects. Successful candidates will be able to demonstrate existing knowledge of more than one, depending on experience level, and, importantly, a commitment to develop new expertise in others.

- PhD in Data Science related fields.
- Experience in using large, scalable relational databases, ranging from postgresql to redshift
- Computational statistics, particularly Bayesian modelling.
- Visualisation for understanding large, complex, or high-dimensional data
- Knowledge management and ontology engineering, semantic web.
- Exposure to mixed or qualitative research methods
- User interface design and development with web technologies, especially for data visualisation and knowledge representation.
- Writing technical documentation.
- Experience with public cloud platforms.
- Experience with managing and developing for/on cloud platforms such as Azure;
- Experience working with confidential and sensitive data for research.
- Experience contributing to, maintaining and/or leading open source research software projects.
- Experience building open source communities.
- Working with databases and APIs for the acquisition of parameter information for models.
- Experience working with legacy code, especially in traditional scientific programming languages (eg, Fortran, MATLAB, C).
- Developing and/or delivering teaching and training in computational or mathematical methods for research.
- Automated testing, software quality assurance and continuous integration.
- Code review in a distributed team.

### SELECTION PROTOCOL

### Application

Along with a CV and covering letter, please submit a research output to support your application, for us to read before the interview. This might be a link to a selected research or technical paper, a technical blog post or a chapter of a
thesis or dissertation, but we particularly encourage applicants to submit a link to a public version control tool such as GitHub containing an example analysis script or research software library they have made
a significant contribution to. You will be asked questions on this output as part of the interview.

### Interview

As part of their interview candidates will be expected:

At Standard or Senior level:

* To prepare a presentation on your favourite algorithm in data science, artificial intelligence, modelling or simulation. This should be delivered using a literate programming tool, such as Jupyter or RMarkdown, and it should include real code the candidate has written.
* To answer a challenging question on data analysis for research, using a
whiteboard and pen to sketch their understanding of a proposed data challenge.

At Senior or Principal level:

* To describe experiences related to challenging events in personnel and project management.

At Principal level:

* To explain their vision for the role, and how that vision is complementary to those of existing Principals.

## TERMS & CONDITIONS

Salary will be commensurate with the level of experience and seniority of the successful candidate(s).
This is a full time, permanent post, to be held at the Institute’s site at the British Library, Euston Rd, London.

Although this is offered as a full time role based in the London offices, we are extremely supportive of
other working models compatible with candidates' lives.
Requests to work flexibly, in location or in time, or other reasonable adjustments, will be given positive consideration.

A generous benefits package includes flexible working, 30 days’ holiday excluding bank holidays, Cycle2Work, childcare vouchers,
contributory pension, health and life assurance and range of other benefits that you would expect from a good employer.
A relocation allowance is payable where appropriate.

Secondments from partner establishments will be considered for a minimum two-year period of secondment.

## HOW TO APPLY

Please send a covering letter addressing the criteria presented in the Person Specification, and a full CV to [e-mail].
If you have queries or would like to discuss the role further, please contact James Hetherington, Head of Research Engineering, at [e-mail] or [e-mail] (CHECK).
The Alan Turing Institute is committed to creating an environment where diversity is valued and everyone is treated fairly. In accordance with the Equality Act, we welcome applications from anyone who meets the specific criteria of the post regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender reassignment, marital status, pregnancy, religion or belief or sexual orientation. Reasonable adjustments to the interview process can also be made for any candidates with a disability.

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