Data Scientist

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The Data Scientist is responsible for producing valuable information from very large sets of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.  They establish and maintain strong relationships with peers and leaders across IAR, Data Engineering, Product Management, Finance, EdTech, and Faculty staff.  They utilize statistical models, machine learning, text mining, natural language processing, and other methods to create predictive models.  These models may be integrated into new or existing workflows.

Primary Responsibilities

• Documents data and analytics needs in projects of medium/high complexity with a student and equity-centered lens, collaborating with peers, cross-functional partners, faculty staff, and leaders.  Translates user stories into technical requirements.

• Sets and manages expectations about analytics tasks and activities through clear, timely, and effective communication with partners and stakeholders.

• Identifies adequate data sources and data sets to evaluate hypotheses and produce forecasts.

• Analyzes large data sets from both structured and unstructured sources and develops statistical and predictive models.

• Collaborates with Data Engineering in the development of ETL/ELT processes and data pipelines.

• Identifies, investigates, and solves complex data issues, contributing to the accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, and validity of the university’s data.

• Utilizes software, scripts, and algorithms to perform complex data-related tasks (e.g., importing, cleaning, transforming, analyzing, displaying) without human intervention.

• Combines data analysis, visualization, and narrative structures to convey information in compelling ways that instigate deliberate action.

• Selects and deploys a variety of mathematical models, forecasting methods (e.g., time series, inferential, regression), descriptive statistics, and/or classification algorithms to make predictions and identify relationships based on limited sets of data.

• Conveys information effectively to peers, partners, and senior leaders, using a variety of resources and formats (synchronous and asynchronous, verbal and written) such as e-mails, presentations, meeting, and workshops.

• Creates and organizes information about processes, projects, operations, data assets, and insights from analyses, making it accessible in ways that increase the university’s knowledge and efficiency.

• Writes and interprets technical documentation (e.g. Entity-Relationship, Conceptual, Logical, and Physical data models).

• Contributes actively to the enrichment of the university’s data management platforms (e.g., data dictionaries, catalogs, etc.).

• Tracks and reports own progress, dependencies, and challenges diligently.

• Designs small-scale solutions and collaborates effectively with other technical specialists (e.g., data engineers) in the construction of data products, systems, and applications.

• Understands and abides by the relevant policies and methods to access, use, transform, store, and delete data in responsible, secure, and compliant ways.

• Works actively in improving own skills and knowledge through internal and external, formal and informal, structured and unstructured learning.  Is a lifelong learner and embodies a growth mindset. 

• Performs other job-related duties as assigned.

This job description includes a general representation of job requirements rather than a comprehensive inventory of all required responsibilities or work activities.  The contents of this document or related job requirements may change at any time with or without notice.

Qualifications

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Advanced SQL proficiency, with experience writing queries and subqueries, modifying data (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE), creating views, and knowledge of the different join types, filtering, sorting, aggregation, window functions, common table expre