Senior Data Scientist, Community Growth

Summary

The Community Growth team at the Wikimedia Foundation works to improve knowledge equity by supporting our global communities of volunteers through grantmaking, capacity development, and strategic partnership building. We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist, reporting to the Manager of Data, Learning & Evaluation (Community Growth), who will support the strategic work of Community Growth with impactful, accessible, and ethical data and insights.

As a Senior Data Scientist, you will work in a complex data ecosystem to build critical, resilient data pipelines and self-service dashboards and reports, empowering Community Growth teams and leaders to make data-informed decisions to iterate and adapt their support of Wikimedia communities.

You are responsible for:

• In partnership with the DL&E Manager, designing a data system for grantee activities and outcomes that enables standardization and connection with our primary data pipelines
• Leading the creation and maintenance of internal data dashboards to track Community Growth programs' outcomes and impacts
• Identifying actionable insights from trends and themes across datasets to inform reports and decision-making about grantmaking, partnerships, and programmatic interventions
• Designing Community Growth data processes for maximum effectiveness, building data frames and connecting to pipelines for effective and efficient storage and retrieval, basic aggregation and ETL
• Collaborating across departments, including with technology data teams, to ensure that calculation of metrics are aligned with Foundation-level metric practices
• Proactively identifying requirements to support and improve an evolving data ecosystem

Skills and Experience:

• Fluency in English
• Bachelor’s degree and five years related experience OR a Master’s degree and at least three years related experience; or equivalent advanced work experience in data analysis, data science, research and analytics or a related field
• Proven experience with programming languages, particularly SQL and either R or Python
• Experience working with large-scale data processing & storage tools (we use Hadoop, Hive, Presto, and Spark)
• Experience with data visualization and dashboarding tools like Apache Superset, Google Looker Studio, or similar tools
• Experience with Google Suite (Including the full suite of collaborative apps and advanced coding in Google Sheets/MS Excel)

Qualities that are important to us:

• Ability to address problems of diverse scope using good judgment in selecting methods and techniques for obtaining quality and efficient solutions
• Ability to communicate findings and recommendations clearly to colleagues with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise
• Experience with or exposure to ethical data management and privacy practices
• Ability to problem solve and to learn and apply new technologies and tools
• Desire to learn, share knowledge, and help other colleagues
• Flexibility and openness to change and new information

And we'd love it if you have:

• Advanced statistical training and experience
• Interest in or knowledge of Wikimedia projects, the free knowledge movement, global education and/or international development
• Cross-cultural sensitivity and awareness
• Experience with open-source tools
• Fluency in languages other than English
• Nonprofit, NGO or INGO experience

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge, and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content, support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible, and advocate for policies that enable Wikimedia and free knowledge to thrive. 

The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

As an equal opportunity employer, the Wikimedia Foundation values having a diverse workforce and continuously strives to