Senior Research Scientist

Reporting to the Lead Data Scientist, the Senior Research Scientist is responsible for designing, implementing, and overseeing data-driven research and analysis for projects that utilize a wide variety of methodologies to understand audience cultural consumption and narratives about important issues in media. The Senior Research Scientist will also take part in communicating the research methodologies and findings to internal and external stakeholders, including by contributing to the preparation of reports, presentations, and other deliverables.

Position Detail

What You'll Do

Design, implement, and oversee data-driven research and analysis projects, using independent knowledge, judgment, and creativity

Participate in planning for multiple projects with varying lengths and timelines in a way that maximizes the efficacy of our interdisciplinary project teams
Collaborate with project teams to define data collection methods, analytic and sampling techniques, and requirements to ensure the validity and reliability of survey results; and translate those into systems of targets and quotas relying on data from Census and other sources
Identify the necessary data and best methodologies to use to tackle the big questions a project seeks to answer, including determining how to construct primary data collection, including surveys, RCTs, and annotation, such that we are able to find signal in the data
Determine the best way to respond to research problems and roadblocks as they arise, keeping the goal of the project and good research principles in mind as we find new ways to drive research forward

Retrieve data from diverse sources including relational databases and data lakes using efficient, robust, well-documented methods

In partnership with interdisciplinary project teams, lead the thoughtful and systematic productionization of data science solutions, including the collection and use of owned and primary data in order to develop insights for projects
Oversee and manage both human and technological components of primary data collection, including managing contractors and using APIs for external data providers to retrieve data required on an ad hoc basis
Regularly monitor and maintain testing tools, platforms, and data collection processes to identify and address any issues or discrepancies in real-time, communicating issues and changes in time and cost to Lead Data Scientist
Identify and troubleshoot challenges and opportunities with data systems and work collaboratively with the Engineering Team to implement data-driven solutions

Conduct data exploration, analysis, and visualization using a wide variety of methods, including advanced statistics, to understand audience cultural consumption and narratives in media

Analyze survey data using advanced techniques including weighting, factor analysis, clustering, generalized linear models, and others for survey data
Analyze social graph data using techniques including community detection, neighborhood analysis, and others for social graph data
Analyze text data using techniques including embedding, API-based large language models, custom neural network pipelines, unsupervised and semi-supervised clustering, and profiling results and others for text data
Combine data using both conventional merges and fuzzy or partial matching techniques to extract new information about the most important features in narratives
Conduct predictive modeling and statistics using techniques including forests of trees, naive bayes, logistic and linear regression, and others

Communicate research methodologies and findings to internal and external stakeholders

Ensure complex research findings are accurately communicated in a way that excites stakeholders and welcomes discussion and questions
Contribute to the creation of reports, presentations, and other deliverables
Explore innovative new ways to convey information, including through written descriptions, data visualizations, and interactive tools
Effectively interact with stakeholders to give them fidelity with the research findings so they can apply their own expertise to them, including strategy and communications
Review and respond to others work to ensure the accuracy of the findings and alignment with the goals of the project

About You

Who You Are

You thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative research environment with a high-volume workload often requiring short turnaround times.
You are deeply collaborative. You bring your own expertise to team projects and create solutions that makes use of the expertise of others
You are curious. You do research because you really want to know the answer, and you want to answer big questions about how media affect us and we affect media
You have a strong intuition for what makes research good from sample specification to question design to survey daypart selection.
You are flexible and you know how to keep your eye on the goal when plans don’t work or problems come up
You have a strong understanding of statistics and how to employ different methodologies to conduct advanced analysis, and you understand when and how to employ advanced analysis to meet the goals of a project

Desired Experience

You have at least 3 years of professional work experience in data science, market research, or a related field.
You have experience conducting research–executing on data collection operations–in a work environment.
You have experience assembling, cleaning, and analyzing data using Python and R in class or at work.
You have experience working on cross-disciplinary teams in a work environment.

Details

Compensation

This is a full-time, exempt position reporting to the Lead Data Scientist
This is a Level 2 or Level 3 position with a salary between $115,000 - $130,000
There is a generous benefits package, including:
Health, dental and vision insurance, employer paid across all categories, including for partners, children, and families
Unlimited paid time off, with minimum thresholds for use
401(k) with 100% match of up to 6% of salary per pay period, with immediate vesting
Pre-tax spending plans for commute, parking, dependent care, healthcare
Professional development stipends, paid parental leave, sabbaticals
Harmony Labs is a 100% remote workplace, with home office set up and annual reimbursements, periodic in-person retreats, and access to conference space at WeWork.
Meeting-free Flex Fridays give teams a chance to catch up on work or unplug completely.
Harmony Labs provides a laptop.

How To Apply

Please submit a resume and cover letter, clearly describing your interest and experience to jobs@harmonylabs.org. Due to the number of emails we receive, we regret that we are unable to respond to each one.

Broad perspectives and diverse experiences are key to serving society, and innovating in a way that responds to our complex, interdependent global context. While Harmony Labs employs only United States citizens and those non-U.S. citizens authorized to work in the United States, in compliance with national regulations, we strongly encourage people from backgrounds currently underrepresented in tech, research, media, and data science to apply. Harmony Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We value and welcome diversity in the workplace and strongly encourage all qualified persons to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

About Harmony Labs

We are a media research lab, using science, data, and creativity to research and reshape our relationship with media. For more than a decade, Harmony Labs has helped storytellers and strategists, decision makers and dreamers, harness the immense power of media to shape a positive, pluralistic future. With the Narrative Observatory, for the first time ever, we're harnessing powerful industry relationships to deliver one-of-a-kind data infrastructure that empowers partners to find, reach, and resonate with the right audience in today's media minefield. The Narrative Observatory delivers audience-based insights, narrative and network analysis, and empirical validation of cultural strategy and content---all derived from the actual behavior of real people and true audiences, not survey results, demographic groups, or inauthentic online activity.

We work with a wide range of partners on issues of existential importance, like climate, gun violence, political corruption, artificial intelligence, and more, using an approach to research that is rigorous, participatory, and public. One of the first papers we co-authored looked at fracking narratives in documentary film. The outputs we've created with our partners include websites, presentations, peer-reviewed publications, toolkits, curriculum, interactives, white papers, and media. And our work has been covered in the press, like in this recent New York Times article.