Data Scientist

Position Summary: The Democratic National Committee's Tech Team is hiring a Data Scientist to build, evaluate, and optimize predictive models for the DNC to help candidates and state parties optimize their strategy and voter contact programs. The DNC's data science models will help Democrats win elections all across the country by providing foundational guidance on strategy, resource allocation and effective voter outreach. In this role, you will be a subject matter expert in data science at the DNC. You will partner with Product Managers, Engineers and Analytics Engineers to elevate our strategic impact and empower Democratic initiatives. We're looking for a strong technical collaborator who can work effectively and positively to deliver on outcomes for our users.

Responsibilities: We're looking for someone who is excited to contribute to all stages of our data science pipelines, from finding and cleaning the data sources we need to figuring out the right statistical methods to apply to each problem. We're a small team working on some of the hardest problems in demography and politics and believe that the best way to solve them is by working together. Good candidates are willing to get nerdy about the details and dirty in the data while staying focused on our goal of electing Democrats. Among other things, in this role you could help us: Improve and extend our internal record linkage tooling to build a fuller picture of voters. Help us maintain a premier voter file and help campaigns identify the impact of their programs through probabilistic matching. Innovate and improve the foundational predictive models we provide to Democratic campaigns. Help us harness statistical and machine learning techniques to build better predictions about voter attributes and behaviors to enable our users to better understand their voters, donors, and volunteers. Collaborate with engineers and analysts to deliver results. Partner across functions to deliver timely and high quality data products to our users. Promote tech team cultural values. Promote and embody an empathetic, kind, and collaborative workplace where people can do their best work to elect more Democrats. Encourage learning both within data science and cross-functionally, fostering an environment of growth and curiosity. Productionize and automate testing and delivery pipelines to ensure timely and complete delivery of our products to users. Promote best practices for a product team, including thorough testing, automation, and code built to last for election cycles to come. Build new predictive models for more efficient voter outreach. In cases where a new model is needed, help leverage our existing data and identify new data sources to create new and better predictions. Evaluate vendor-provided models for purchase. Where we do not have sufficient resources to build models in-house, drive validation and evaluation of vendor models to meet user needs. Empower DNC tech team leadership with the technical understanding and context to make balanced build vs. buy decisions. Increase fairness, accountability and transparency in our models. Ensure we are empowering users with the right training and documentation to leverage our data products to the greatest effect. Other duties as assigned to support the department and the DNC's mission. You will be part of the DNC's Data Team and will focus on both 1) the near-term results we need to drive for the 2028 election cycle and 2) the long-range development of groundbreaking products for the progressive ecosystem at large.

About the Team: This is high-impact, mission-centered work: ideal for someone who's energized by progressive tech and wants to build systems that make a difference. We're a fully remote team that values clarity over complexity, curiosity over ego, and sustainability over burnout. We believe good ideas can come from anywhere, that accountability and empathy can coexist, and that work should feel meaningful without consuming your whole life. Our team is unafraid to chart a path forward, even in the face of ambiguity. In this role, you'll be part of the Data Science Team, and report into our Data Science Lead. You'll work cross-functionally with the rest of the Data Team– including analysts and engineers– to collaboratively deliver high quality data products to users across the Democratic ecosystem.

Qualifications: You have experience doing data science or statistics in a social sciences or business context, which may include electoral politics. You code comfortably in Python or R and SQL, and have familiarity with dbt. You have experience with record linkage methods, predictive modeling, and/or experiment design. You have strong written and verbal communication skills, and experience explaining technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. You won't just be building data science products, but you'll be helping us ensure our diverse users trust them and know how to use them for their individual needs. You are comfortable with building but also maintaining. We often need to move quickly and with agility to meet campaign deadlines, and sometimes you'll need to leverage what's been created already to get products to users when they need them most. You are curious, collaborative, and humble – ready to work with a diverse, distributed team to solve interesting problems together. Have experience working in modern cloud data environments (GCP, BigQuery, Airflow, etc.).Have experience working with political data like state voter files, election results, or data on voter, volunteer, or donor engagement and/or the DNC's data and analytics tools, including experience doing analysis in our BigQuery-based data warehouse (Phoenix) or exposure to political CRMs (e.g. VoteBuilder, NGP VAN, Matchbook).Have experience using cloud computing platforms and their ML services (such as BigQuery ML/Vertex AI on GCP, Sagemaker on AWS, or Azure) or using machine learning infrastructure built on open-source tools (e.g. MLflow or Tensorflow).Understand the role data can play in political program planning; you think of analysis through the lens of the decisions it will inform, and are deeply focused on asking the right questions before you dive into the weeds of any particular analysis.

Salary: The starting salary for the Data Scientist position is $110,000, on an annualized basis, commensurate with experience and qualifications. This is a full-time, exempt position, that may require work on weekends. This position is in the bargaining unit represented by SEIU Local-500.The Democratic National Committee (DNC), is committed to diversity among its staff, and recognizes that its continued success requires the highest commitment to obtaining and retaining a diverse staff that provides the best quality services to supporters and constituents. The DNC is an equal opportunity employer and it is our policy to recruit, hire, train, promote and administer any and all personnel actions without regard to sex, race, age, color, creed, national origin, religion, economic status, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity or expression, ethnic identity or physical disability, or any other legally protected basis. The DNC will not tolerate any unlawful discrimination and any such conduct is strictly prohibited.