Data Scientist

Job Description

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is the nation’s largest public housing authority, with an operating budget of $3.3 billion and over 11,000 employees who manage and maintain 325 developments that house about 400,000 residents. NYCHA also operates the country’s largest Section 8 program, which provides rental assistance to about 200,000 additional people.

Overview
EHS is responsible for “analyzing, overseeing, and improving environmental health and safety at NYCHA, which shall include but not be limited to issues relating to lead-based paint, mold, heating, pests, elevators, air quality, and other aspects of NYCHA’s physical environment that affect residents’ health or safety”, “reporting to NYCHA’s senior management and Board on environmental health and safety issues” and “making recommendations to NYCHA’s senior management and Board for improvement and correction of any environmental health and safety issues at NYCHA”. EHS fulfills this obligation through the extensive data and report management work conducted by the Analysis and Engagement Unit (AEU).

About the Position
As a key driver of data-driven decision-making, the Data Scientist will play a pivotal role in shaping analytical strategies and insights for the Analysis and Reporting Team. Reporting directly to the Administrator, the Data Scientist will work across all teams to provide support on various data technical projects, data analytics; data quality activities; including building insightful PowerBI dashboards that assist in data driven analysis. The ideal candidate will be a self-starter who can work independently and is comfortable working in a fast-paced, deadline-sensitive environment. This position requires a highly analytical and results-oriented professional who is an effective project manager, a strategic leader, and a skilled communicator with a strong problem-solving mindset. Additionally, they should possess a continuous improvement approach, balancing urgent priorities with long-term analytical advancements.

Data Product Development
- Build tools required to document the observations of the Specialists conducting inspections which includes EHS scoring model, ensure comprehensive gathering of business requirements is
conducted and documented while also ensuring that there is a uniformity with taxonomies and data structure.
- Develop targeted reports, EHS dashboards, and data visualization models that surface key information and trends related to the EHS oversight findings.
- Shadow Business Unit Specialists in the field during oversight inspection to assist in creating documentation tools to capture real life inspection conditions.
- Lead the planning and implementation of AEU projects ensuring projects are completed according to outlined objectives, and project timelines.
- Create and maintain comprehensive project documentation, project tasks; minutes; actions items, including preparing project progress reports.

Reporting/Analysis
- Prepare recurring and ad-hoc reports on EH&S program performance using Power BI, Smartsheet, and Excel, ensuring accurate and timely insights for senior management and Business
Units. Develop interactive dashboards and data visualizations to enhance decision-making and stakeholder engagement.
- Perform data wrangling, exploratory data analysis (EDA), ETL process, and advanced statistical modeling using Python, SQL, Power BI, Excel to derive actionable insights from EH&S data,
enabling evidence-based decision-making and guiding the EH&S Officer in developing effective, data-driven program strategies for Authority-wide improvements.
- Develop, optimize, debug, maintain data pipelines using Power BI and Smartsheet ensuring data integrity, performance, and security and apply predictive models to answer complex and
nuanced questions about the EHS programs and anticipate future needs and behavior of the systems; prepare reports and briefing materials.
- Assist with the establishment of performance metrics and reporting cycles.

Data Quality Assurance
- Review portfolio data to identify anomalies and ensure timely corrections are made to ensure accurate reporting; escalate any unresolved discrepancies.
- Ensure all data is validated doing a crosswalk of the exported results; supporting documentation; and submitted Activity Reports, in addition to conducting peer reviews.
- Build and maintain a DQA report identifying user errors; DQA activities; other metrics required.
- Provide DQA training to all users.
- Ensure Data Discrepancies Log is maintained.

Data Product Management
- Ensure tools developed by AEU are functioning according to requirements, includes but not limited to; reviewing and monitoring data pipelines regularly; managing user permissions; managing
product