Senior Data Scientist

ABOUT M&C SAATCHI WORLD SERVICES

M&C Saatchi World Services is a full-service marketing company renowned for using commercial advertising to solve the world’s toughest challenges. World Services is a specialty branch of M&C Saatchi Group, and we provide strategic communications, behavior change, and marketing support to Public Sector clients with special emphasis on the US Federal Government and State, Local, Tribal, & Territorial leaders.

THE ROLE

M&C Saatchi World Services is seeking a strategic and technically skilled Senior Data Scientist to lead advanced analytics, performance measurement, and data-driven decision support across a diverse portfolio of federal programs. Working at the intersection of analytics, communications, audience engagement, and organizational performance, you will help shape how data informs strategy, planning, and program optimization. You will lead complex analytical initiatives, develop predictive models, guide measurement frameworks, and provide actionable insights that support senior leadership decision-making.

The ideal candidate combines deep analytical expertise with strong business acumen and stakeholder engagement skills. They are comfortable working with large datasets, building advanced models, translating findings into strategic recommendations, and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to drive measurable outcomes

This is a hybrid role; however, the ideal candidate will live in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development and execution of analytics strategies that support communications, outreach, stakeholder engagement, and mission performance objectives.

• Define, measure, and evaluate key performance indicators, audience segments, and organizational performance metrics.

• Develop predictive models, forecasting methodologies, anomaly detection capabilities, and advanced analytical frameworks.

• Lead trend analysis, performance assessments, and root cause investigations that support decision-making and continuous improvement.

• Design and maintain dashboards, visualizations, reporting frameworks, and executive-level analytics products.

• Translate complex datasets into actionable insights and strategic recommendations for leadership and stakeholders.

• Partner with communications, UX, stakeholder engagement, technology, and governance teams to align analytics efforts with mission objectives.

• Guide the development of data models, taxonomies, reporting standards, and measurement methodologies.

• Support the automation and optimization of reporting processes, data pipelines, and analytical workflows.

• Ensure data quality, governance, documentation, and reporting integrity across analytics initiatives.

• Provide mentorship and analytical guidance to team members while promoting data-driven decision-making across the organization.

• Stay current on emerging technologies, machine learning techniques, analytics platforms, and industry best practices.

Key Attributes

• Proven history in developing data science teams supporting operational products and live deployments.

• Strong software engineering fundamentals; version control (Git), testing, code reviews, documentation.

• Experience in applying unsupervised and supervised modelling and expert knowledge on the right application to different problem sets.

• Ability to break down ambiguous or poorly defined problems, developing implementation roadmap, acceptance criteria, and leading a team through the roadmap.

• Experience leading analytics, business intelligence, performance measurement, data science, or advanced reporting initiatives.

• Experience in predictive modeling and forecasting based on historic user activities.

• Strong proficiency in Python and a track record of building and maintaining production systems.

• Hands on experience with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc) and production implementation.

• Experience deploying ML and generative workflows into workflows in cloud environments using common open-source and proprietary tools such as Airlow, AWS Lambda, AWS Batch, AWS Sagemaker, or equivalent.

• Strong experie