Data Scientist
Port Washington, NY

Job Description

Learn and work on meaningful initiatives with some of the best and brightest in the market research industry. The NPD Group provides the world's most successful brands with leading market research, combining consumer and retail point-of-sale data with analytic solutions to interpret today's market trends while anticipating tomorrow's. In addition, we offer a career filled with innovation and growth to the forward-thinking problem solvers who join our team.

Position Overview

You're a passionate, dynamic, and highly motivated individual who's looking for an opportunity to have an impact on some of the most well-known companies in the world. The ideal candidate will be an experienced statistical programmer using R who also has experience working on teams using development methodologies such as Agile, Lean, or Scrum.

This position exists within the Methodology team, a core function that is responsible for developing and promoting best practices across the organization and industry on work including:

* Data imputation and predictive modeling
* Outlier/anomaly detection and adjustment
* Time series analysis
* Iterative fitting algorithms (i.e., raking)
* Automation of quality reviews and related tasks

Overall Responsibilities:

* Statistical program development to build and enhance frameworks for statistical adjustment and modeling.
* Share responsibility for creating/updating requirements, mockups, wireframes, user stories, etc.
* Self-manage task assignments (using issue tracker/Kanban boards, etc.)
* Investigating unexpected results and brainstorming alternative methodological solutions.
* Provide peer mentoring of other team members via code reviews, pair programming, unit test/acceptance test reviews, and brainstorming sessions.
* Help improve development practices and patterns within the team, such as test-driven development, version control, and use of agile management tools.
* Conduct original research-on-research (e.g., through simulations and/or evaluations of historical data) to improve methodologies, processes, and data integrity for both survey and scanner (point-of-sale) data.
* Promote consistency in implementation of designed enhancements across different businesses Maintain relationships with Research Science client teams to understand what is working well with NPD methodology and what could be improved
* Communicate results and procedures to internal clients

Qualifications:

* 2+ years of relevant work experience, with solid breadth and depth of knowledge of statistical and analytic techniques.
* Experience with one or more development methodologies (Agile, Lean, Scrum/Scrum Master) preferred.
* Excellent time management and creative problem solving skills.
* Excellent written and oral communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
* Experience with data analysis in R is required. Experience with additional languages and/or more extensive proficiency preferred.
* Experience with tools for managing software development such as JIRA, Confluence, Github/Gitlab issue tracker, Trello, etc.
* Degree in statistics, quantitative social science, computer science, mathematics, or related fields is required. Graduate-level experience preferred.

Communication

The ideal candidate must be able to conduct engaging and impactful presentations that deliver value to the client while telling a compelling story in a concise and polished manner to a diverse audience. Most importantly, the candidate must demonstrate the ability to listen to the customer and appropriately match the customer's needs with NPD's products and services, or be willing to direct the customer to the best solution.

Relationships

The ideal candidate must be comfortable and effective when talking with a broad range of decision influencers and decision makers within an organization. The candidate will be able to effectively understand and build relationships throughout the prospective customer's organization.

Discipline

The ideal candidate will be competent in managing their time and activities and must embrace our proven opportunity and customer management processes and systems. Candidates must possess a "can-do" perspective in their professional attitude. They will be detail oriented and demonstrate a strong work ethic. They will be sticklers for accuracy in their own work as well as their colleagues. They will be ready to back up their assertions with facts.

Location

We would prefer to find a candidate who can work from our corporate headquarters in Port Washington, NY. However, we are committed to finding the right candidate across all US locations. We have offices in many US cities, including: Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; San Diego, CA; Cincinnati, OH; Boulder, CO; Bentonville, AR; Greensboro, NC;

The NPD Group, Inc. is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.