Senior Data Scientist
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The Senior Data Scientist oversees the activities of the junior data scientists and provides advanced expertise on statistical and mathematical concepts for the broader Data and Analytics department. The Senior Data Scientist applies and inspires the adoption of advanced data science and analytics across the business.
The Data Scientist synthesizes and leverages the business’s dataset and data to enhance the business’ capabilities for overall goal achievement. The Senior Data Scientist is instrumental in helping the business continue its evolution into an analytical and data-driven culture.
This role of the Senior Data Scientist supports relevant stakeholders through quantitative analytics, and the application of appropriate advanced analytics for the business’s key initiatives.
Objectives and Responsibilities of the Senior Data Scientist
Management: The Senior Data Scientist plays a managerial role where he oversees the activities of the junior data analysts, ensuring proper execution of their duties, and alignment of activities with business’s overall vision and objectives. The Senior Data Scientist ensures that the data scientist department adopts the best in class processes and techniques for statistical analysis and modeling as well as leading the roll out of Big Data capabilities, consumer initiatives, analytic framework, and best practices within the department and the Data and Analytics department.
In this capacity, the Senior Data Scientist ensures that the data scientist department is constantly building effective working relationships and building data-fueled solutions that drive the business closer to its overall goals and objectives. The Senior Data Scientist also provides mentorship and guidance to junior data analysts while simultaneously guaranteeing statistical integrity, accuracy, and adequacy within the department.
Analytics: The Senior Data Scientist will also playa an analytical role researching, designing, implementing, and deploying full-stack scalable data analytics vision and machine learning solutions to challenge various business issues.
In this capacity, the Senior Data Scientist builds and maintains a large scale analytics infrastructure to be used across the business and consistently conducts research, design, implementation, and validation of cutting-edge algorithms in order to analyze diverse data sources in order to enable desired business outcomes in diverse fronts.
The Senior Data Scientist also designs, develops, and implements data management systems of analytic frameworks for the business’s data. He also applies advanced statistical capabilities and delivers statistical models, for example, consumer predictive value, churn, segmentation and profiling, association models, and so forth. The Senior Data Analytics will also be required to refine and draw reports and presentation on junior data science departmental performance as well as proposed data science and analytics strategies.
Strategy: The Senior Data Scientist also plays a strategic role where he is tasked with formulating new and creative ideas for leveraging the business’s vast collection of data in the databases. In this capacity, the Senior Data Scientist also works with large sets of data and establishes accurate and scalable analytics systems across varied applications.
He further develops and implements state-of-the-art analytical algorithms for object detection, segmentation, classification, and recognition. The Senior Data Scientist is also tasked with modeling complex discovering insights and identifying business opportunities through the use of algorithmic, statistical, visualization, and mining techniques.
It is also the Senior Data Analysts responsibility to translates business requirements into quick prototypes and enable the development of big data capabilities, frameworks, and governance processes in the department and the business at large enabling more effective execution of data and analytics campaigns and the achievement of overall business targets/objectives.
Collaboration: The role of the Senior Data Analyst like the junior data analyst is a collaborative role and in this position, the Senior Data Analyst works closely with the junior data analysts in developing new and improved analytics systems, all the way from prototyping to production. These systems are then forwarded to senior data science management for review and approval.
He will also work with this senior management and key stake holders in identifying and prioritizing actionable, impactful insights across a variety of core business fronts, driving informed decision-making across the business and, hence, enhancing the business’s capability to achieve goals and objectives.
Knowledge: The Senior Data Analyst also has the responsibility to keep up and provide insights to the data science department and the larger Data and Analytics department on leading data science and analytic practices, trends, design, learning and development cycles, which improves the business’s overall performance by improving data and analytics programs that provide high-impact insights.
Other Duties: The Senior Data Scientist also performs similar duties as he deems fit for the proper execution of his duties and duties as delegated by the Head of Data Science, Director Data Science, Chief Data Officer, or the Employer.
Required Qualifications of the Senior Data Scientist
Education: The Senior Data Scientist has to have a bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Computer Science, Economics, or any other related quantitative field. An equivalent of the same in working experience is also acceptable for the position.
Experience: A candidate for this position must have had at least 5 years of working experience working with in data science capacity within a fast-paced and complex business setting, preferably working as a Senior Data Scientist. The candidate will also have experience working with natural language processing as well as experience working with machine learning libraries, for example, xgboost, OpenCV, sklearn, among others.
The candidate must also have had substantial experience working on strategy or full-life cycle data science as well as experience working with data mining tools such as SAS, Python, SPSS, and R. A suitable candidate for this position will also have had experience in data mining and predictive modeling inclusive of linear and non-Linear regression, logistic regression, and time series analysis models.
The candidate will also have had experience working with deep learning algorithms and large datasets as well as experience working with unstructured data and experience cleaning and manipulating data.
Communication Skills: Communication skills are an absolute necessity for the Senior Data Analyst both in written and verbal form. Communication skills are imperative for the Senior Data Analyst in his managerial position in regard to the conveyance of information and instructions down the line to junior data science personnel, which will determine their performance and the effectiveness with which they execute their duties.
The Senior Data Scientist will also be required to have exceptional communication skills in his collaborative role and in the delivery of clear, engaging, and understandable reports. The Senior Data Scientist must be capable of tailoring complex messages into simplified and business applicable material for key stakeholders and senior data science management.
Ms Office Software: A suitable candidate will have exceptionally good skills in the use of Ms Word, Ms Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, all necessary for the creation of both visually and verbally engaging reports and presentations, for senior data science management and key stakeholders.
The candidate must also have demonstrated exceptionally good skills in SQL server reporting services, analysis services, domo, integration services, NoSQL, Tableau, Salesforce, or other data visualization tools.
Technological Savvy/Analytical Skills: A candidate for this position will have exceptionally good computer skills and be all-around technologically adept. He will also have a strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, statistics, and machine learning as well as be highly proficient in Java, C++, or other equivalent languages.
A suitable candidate for this position must additionally have strong SQL skills, Teradata, Greenplum, and be highly skilled in working with platforms, such as Hadoop.
Interpersonal Skills: The Senior Data Scientist must have exceptional interpersonal skills that make him better suited for the position. He must be a result-oriented individual, be a self-motivated and proactive needing minimal supervision, be a strategic and creative thinker, have an ability to handle multiple simultaneous projects, be highly organized able to prioritize and meet tight deadlines, have a keen eye for detail, have an ability to work comfortably in a group/collaborative setting, take accountability for business and team performance, have an ability to stay calm and composed in times of uncertainty and stress.
People Skills: A suitable candidate will also be a likeable, relatable, and approachable individual who is able to form strong bonds with other people. This must be couple with confidence, which will together inspire trust in his senior and stakeholders who will trust in his insights and judgments and inspire the same in junior data scientist who will readily follow in his directives.
