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Junior Data Scientist (Remote)

Regular Full-Time Exempt US Requisition ID: 1690

Best Friends recently received a 2022 Top Workplaces USA award from Energage. Visit the Best Friends Animal Society page on the Energage Top Workplaces award winners’ site here to learn more. Not only do we take pride on cultivating a welcoming and supportive community and culture for our employees, but we also offer competitive benefits that make it easy to see why we were granted such an awesome award! Take a look for yourself! We offer competitive pay, medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, short and long-term disability, dependent care reimbursement, pet sitting reimbursement when traveling for work, flexible spending account, health savings account, generous paid time off, paid holidays, auto insurance discount, and legal and identify theft coverage. For added wellbeing support, we offer Pawternity Leave for employees to have time to care for their personal pets, mental health support, and an employee assistance program. We also offer a generous 401k savings plan.

Location: Remote

Hiring Range: This position is anticipated to start between $77,000 to $90,000 annually, depending on experience.

Position Summary:

The Shelter Pet Data Alliance (SPDA) is a collaborative, free, state-of-the-art shelter data tracking tool that will provide the animal welfare industry with the most comprehensive look at shelter and rescue data across the country through an interactive and neutral website. With the most advanced data automation, reporting, and analysis available, this next generation tool empowers animal welfare organizations in communities across the United States to make data-driven decisions in the moment to enable their work.

Ranked one of Fast Company’s top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Data Science in 2021, Best Friends is seeking an inquisitive detail-oriented data scientist to join our Data & Analytics team to support innovation in animal welfare. The Jr Data Scientist will derive actionable insights from multiple sources across the country, analyzing high volume timely data to empower lifesaving in every community. This position will e into this data to uncover patterns, communicate, scale, predict, and prescribe where Best Friends must prioritize shelter support to reach our no-kill goal by 2025, and then maintain no-kill. Beyond Best Friends’ national programming insights, this position will also produce recommendations for the animal welfare movement, including inidual shelters and rescues, to empower their work.

The Jr Data Scientist will work closely with the community of analysts at Best Friends that have established and maintain our National Dataset work, Pet Lifesaving Dashboard, and other shelter data products to support Best Friends commitment to the animal welfare industry, as well as our position as a thought leader, multiplying our impact across the movement.

Culture Statement and Responsibility:

Treat people around you as our most valuable resource by leading with Kindness and Compassion in all your actions, build trust by demonstrating authenticity and following through on your commitments, encourage self-care and work-life balance through your own example, and work to build strong relationships with your team by creating communication loops to share and receive honest feedback. You are responsible and accountable for the culture of your team.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with teams across the organization, especially the programs ision, to include regional, network, national and municipal shelter support, shelter collaborative and learning advancement to identify which research topics would be most impactful in lifesaving and how to best communicate findings to a wide and varied audience.
• Identify business problems and questions, and devise methods to continuously solve those problems and answer those questions.
• Recommend additional data (internal or third party) to make projections and prescriptive analysis more robust and reliable.
• Collaborate with data engineering team to understand current data ecosystem, and plans for developing the landscape necessary for the innovations that will reach our lifesaving goals.
• Collaborate with data visualization specialists to make insights available to SPDA participating shelters and rescues.
• Identifying, collecting, and cleansing the data needed to test the hypotheses; applying data mining techniques, statistical analysis, predictive modeling, and machine learning techniques to derive insight from the collected data; documenting and communicating the insights derived from the data; and working with the business and Project Management Office to test and incorporate the delivered insights into business operations.
• Assist in analytical needs for the creation of the annual national dataset.
• Create timely and meaningful reports, analyses, forecasts, etc., to fulfill organizational planning, strategy, and measurement needs.
• Develop a more holistic community understanding through utilization of new data sources to identify gaps/opportunities in access to care and services, and implications for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in external-facing efforts and programs.
• Propose, develop, and execute analytics projects around shelter pets, community and stray pet populations, and other relevant topics for publication and distribution.
• Identifying and forming data used for training and testing machine learning models.
• Data mining using leading edge methods to determine best algorithm to use to derive desired insight.
• Selecting, building, and optimizing features and classifiers using machine learning techniques
• Prepare and present outcomes of data science activities.
• Promote the ethical use of quality data for all users of SPDA data and insights.
• Assist in maintaining a library of internal research.
• Participate in conferences, meetings, panels, etc. where the issue of animal welfare is being discussed.
• Act as Best Friends spokesperson as needed.

Skills & Experience:

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, information systems, computer engineering, or a related field or equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of industry experience in predictive modeling, data science and analysis
• Proficiency with data science and machine learning tools and languages, such as: Python, R; and SQL, etc.
• Understanding of how and when to apply machine learning techniques and algorithms, such as: KNN, Nave Bayes, and Decision Trees.
• Quantitative and qualitative analytics, statistics, forecasting, predictive modeling, Tableau software and other Business Intelligence tools/platforms as needed.
• Ability to translate business problems into research questions, methodologies and findings that are reliable and insightful; conversely, the ability to translate methodologies and findings in a clear and understandable way to erse audiences.
• Experience with the animal welfare movement and understanding of animal sheltering data a plus
• Familiarity with using data visualization tools such as: Tableau, Power BI, Qlik, etc.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects in various stages of development, each with a unique timeline, and prioritize work required for innovation and business impact.
• Exceptional analytical, conceptual, and problem-solving skills.
• Resourceful, get-it-done attitude; initiative to assist in any area or process; seeking answers independently and enthusiastically; flexibility to persist until goals are achieved.
• Strong interpersonal skills, a team player, personable, professional, and able to get along with people from different backgrounds, as well as the ability to handle sensitive and confidential situations.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills and the ability to explain complex concepts in nontechnical, business-oriented terms.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office products.

Physical Requirements

• Able to work at a computer for extended periods of time with repetitive typing, arm and hand motion.
• Ability to travel as required, anticipated less than 10%.
• After applicants accept an offer of employment in writing, they will be asked to provide Covid-19 vaccination status information pursuant to any applicable policies in place at the time of hiring.

Thank you for your interest in pursuing a career at Best Friends Animal Society. Best Friends Animal Society is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, or domestic partner status.

Applicants for employment in the US must have valid work authorization that does not now and/or will not in the future require sponsorship of a visa for employment authorization in the US by Best Friends Animal Society.