Seeking Full-Time Data Scientist, Remote Work

Thresher. Thresher helps organizations find high-value signals hidden in the noisy world of human-generated text data.  We identify content hidden from standard search approaches or at risk for manipulation. Better content leads to better analysis, and better analysis leads to better decisions. Thresher is a collaborative team of Ph.D.-level data scientists and a former intelligence officer who understands the needs of experts conducting high stakes analyses that have real impact.

We are growing our data science team as we wrestle with these complex challenges.

What You’ll Do:

• Work with our subject matter experts and engineers to turn prototypes into scalable, production software
• Work with our advisors from Harvard, Stanford, and UC San Diego to ensure we are employing the best methodologies to address important, meaningful problems
• Be responsible for projects that span statistical and mathematical reasoning, business communications and leadership, and computer programming
• Deliver insights on existing initiatives and come up with innovative product growth opportunities
• Experiment with a range of data science techniques to produce insight, including machine learning, deep learning, network analysis, sampling methodologies, text analytics in multiple languages and data visualization
• Explore and extract value from out of databases of over 100 million documents
• Use ML to perform various classification tasks at the document and author level
• Use Neural Networks and other techniques to leverage our unlabeled data
• Design and execute experiments to evaluate the integrity of our data sampling and data collection strategies.
• Build prototype tools to help our SMEs extract insights from our data
• Use statistics to give SME insights a robust mathematical backing
• Participate in strategic discussions about the direction data science should be taking the company.

Useful skills include:

• A good understanding of statistics, including familiarity with statistical tests, distributions, and maximum likelihood estimators
• Experience with Machine Learning, text analytics, and/or network analysis
• Ability to code, wrangle data, and implement algorithms in Python or R and familiarity with database querying languages like SQL or Elasticsearch
• Knowledge of which tools are suited for a given task but also the ability to go beyond those best practices
• Ability to communicate with data visualizations
• Ability to communicate well verbally and in writing at all levels of technical expertise, including to non-technical customers
• Capability to understand and integrate client needs
• Ability to work in a team with a diverse set of skills and life experiences
• Time management skills. We have a lot to do in a little time. Understanding how to get things done, how to prioritize, and how to do that with others is key
• Ability to creatively solve problems and learn quickly with little to no direction
• Track record of turning insights into product growth opportunities
• Comfort (and better yet excited by) dealing with imperfect, unstructured, incomplete data
• Familiarity with software development procedures/tools like Agile, Git, and Jira
• Strong quantitative background with a Bachelor’s degree in Physics, Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Economics, Engineering, or similar field. Master’s degrees preferred. Ph.D. is even better.

Note we said ‘useful’. We do not expect candidates to have all of these skills. We value the hard and soft skills equally. 
 

Security Clearance: Mission and Sunlight
We have a strong preference for candidates with an active TS/SCI Security Clearance. We can offer you the unusual position of a job with mission and sunlight because you will not be working on site. If you don’t have a clearance, but have the skills we need, please apply if you are a US citizen.

Why Thresher?  This is a great opportunity to collaborate on a team with diverse data and social science experience and work on challenging technical problems with a meaningful mission in the national security and commercial sectors. Our team is made up of veteran entrepreneurs and world-class data scientists, engineers, and subject matter experts. 

Compensation is competitive and includes 20 days of vacation, 9 federal holidays, 9 days of sick leave. We cover 100% of health care premiums for employees and 50% of premiums for spouses and dependents as well as the premiums for short and long-term disability plus life insurance. We match your contributions to a SIMPLE IRA up to 3% of your salary.

All applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin. We welcome applications from veterans. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.

If you are interested, please submit a cover letter describing a challenging data science problem you solved and why you are interested in working with Thresher, and a resume.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.