Director of Data Science

Newsela unlocks the written word by publishing daily news articles at five reading levels to engage students in grades 2-12 in high-interest topics from immigration and diplomacy to drones and animal extinction. Launched in 2013, more than 37 million Newsela articles have been read by students, making Newsela the number 1 online news source for students.

Our first Director of Data Science will bring team leadership to our growing team of data professionals, technical leadership to our product development, and thought leadership across the entire organization, ensuring that our practices are innovative and collaborative. You will be responsible for building a key function into a practice. You’ll provide our talented Data team with guidance and mentorship, bringing them to new heights. And you’ll enhance Newsela’s product features and functionality by providing our decision-makers with powerful data-driven results. Your work will not only enhance Newsela and its products, it will immeasurably help teachers and improve student literacy around the globe. If you’re as excited as we are about making meaningful change in education and affecting the lives of children everywhere.

• Analyze student and teacher engagement using multiple signals, including assessment and user interaction data, to create predictive analytics of student learning and school purchasing decisions.
• Build and maintain infrastructure for data storage and analysis.
• Help communicate data to end users across the company so that it is accessible and actionable.
• Work with other product teams to instrument new features for data collection.
• Seek external validity between Newsela and real-world student literacy outcomes.
• Manage both scientists and engineers working in an interdisciplinary environment.
• Mentor your team and set the tone for data science at Newsela.

The Ideal Candidate

• 5+ years experience as a Data Scientist.
• 3+ years experience managing engineering teams that solve complex problems.
• Demonstrated experience performing and applying research in a company setting.
• Demonstrated programming experience in both academic and business environments.
• Proven mastery of both Frequentist and Bayesian statistics.
• Demonstrated ability to assess abstract data science problems and come up with creative answers.
• Demonstrated experience with experimental design and the scientific method.
• Proven expertise in:
  • Computational linguistics/Natural language processing
  • Machine learning
  • Database systems
  • Data visualization

A Few Plusses

• Demonstrated experience doing high-level management in a startup environment.
• Expresses opinions on data infrastructure and the best methods to store data.