Senior Data Scientist (Contract)

Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) is seeking an experienced data scientist with a machine learning background to develop data-driven features and support strategic decision making. This mission-critical role will contribute to HBP’s next generation of edtech and media products and support data initiatives across the organization. 

The initial focus of the role will be supporting our first customer-facing chatbot by measuring performance, identifying product development opportunities based on what users ask, and partnering with our engineering team to improve functionality. 

What you’ll do 

• Conduct data science research and build ML models to support a variety of applications, including:  (a) Agentic GenAI applications (our first customer-facing product is already in production and a second is in active development) (b) Better understanding HBP’s unique content library to support a range of customer-facing and internal use cases (c) Personalization of our media and learning products
• Participate in the prototyping, software implementation, monitoring, and upkeep of user-facing and internal data products
• Perform a variety of data analyses to support decision making, communicating findings and recommendations to stakeholders
• Participate in ETL development (dbt), dashboard development (Tableau), and A/B testing
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define data needs and project requirements and influence product roadmaps
• Keep abreast of ML/AI literature and practice, identifying opportunities for improvement in our models
• Identify opportunities to apply data science and analytics to support use cases across HBP 

What we’re looking for 

• 5+ years of data science research experience, with a strong focus on machine learning and statistical analysis

• Strong understanding of the algorithms underlying a variety of statistical and machine learning models relevant to information retrieval, GenAI, NLP, and personalization

• Strong programming and algorithm development skills as applied to working with large data sets in Python, including experience deploying machine learning models to production
• Practicality, a bias for action, and comfort with ambiguity
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to draw robust conclusions from data
• Excellent communication and team collaboration skills. 
• Personalization of our media and learning products
• Participate in the prototyping, software implementation, monitoring, and upkeep of user-facing and internal data products
• Perform a variety of data analyses to support decision making, communicating findings and recommendations to stakeholders
• Participate in ETL development (dbt), dashboard development (Tableau), and A/B testing
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define data needs and project requirements and influence product roadmaps
• Keep abreast of ML/AI literature and practice, identifying opportunities for improvement in our models
• Identify opportunities to apply data science and analytics to support use cases across HBP.