Data Scientist, Office of Institutional Research & Analysis

The Office of Institutional Research & Analysis (IRA) is the central source for information about the University of Denver. We serve the University's vision, values, mission, and goals by analyzing and reporting institutional data to inform University and unit-level planning and development.

The Office of Institutional Research & Analysis performs systematic, objective research and analysis to inform strategic planning, decision making, and policy development at the University. We employ a holistic understanding of the complex interaction between academic and business systems and processes to deliver timely, accurate information and insight to members of the DU community and promote the strategic use of data resources across campus.

Our mission is to advance access, equity, and success in higher education by working in partnership with stakeholders and University leadership to ensure an institutional culture of assessment, data strategy, and data-informed decision making.

Position Summary

The Data Scientist is a full-time, twelve-month staff position that provides expertise in data process automation and quantitative research methods to support institutional research and analysis at the University. The position works with staff within the Institutional Research office, stakeholders across campus, and reports to the Director of Analytics and Senior Data Scientist.

The Data Scientist also supports institutional research duties within the office by responding to ad hoc requests for information, developing dashboards and visualizations to communicate institutional data, and training and reviewing the work of other analysts to ensure the integrity of reporting and research functions. This position leverages multiple data sources to develop automated retrieval and cleaning processes.

The Data Scientist employs scripting, statistics and data management techniques to retrieve, transform, and analyze institutional data and construct exploratory and explanatory data products. The position will be responsible for maintaining existing data products and will support advanced analytical efforts through the creation and maintenance of data pipelines and nuanced backend processes. The position will also identify areas in which analytics and visualization have potential to yield insight about University operations and functions; design and conducts institutional research projects; and interpret research findings and makes recommendations to support planning and development centrally and within academic and administrative units.

Essential Functions

• Design, build and maintain new and existing automated processes/data pipelines predominately using Python and SQL for data retrieval, cleaning, aggregation, supplementation, analysis, visualization and reporting. (40%)
• Consult with University departments on efforts to produce and systematize quantitative reporting and research efforts and respond to research requests from the University’s academic and administrative units. (20%)
• Identify areas of need and develop and prepare studies to support planning and policy development; respond to research requests from the University’s academic and administrative units, representing the IRA office in developing and enhancing collaborative partnerships between the office and these units. (15%)
• Provide leadership and project management on IRA projects, including training analysts on relevant data, analyses and technology to complete their duties related to IRA projects. (10%)
• Identifies emergent reporting and analytics needs at the University and collaborates with stakeholders to leverage opportunities for growth, development, automation, and standardization by developing reports, dashboards, models, and visualizations. (10%)
• Other duties as assigned. (5%)

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

Knowledge

• Python
• SQL
• Statistical analysis, hypothesis testing, forecasting, predictive analytics, machine learning and probability theory
• Data visualization and dashboard development, preferably using Tableau
• Version control

Abilities

• Automate data retrieval, cleaning and aggregation processes using open source tools
• Replicate analytic projects and research findings
• Independently explore, validate, merge and leverage information from multiple data sources
• Visually convey data-based findings to internal and external audiences
• Identify and apply appropriate analytic approaches (e.g., classifiers, estimators, hypothesis testing procedures, unsupervised models, etc.) within a given context
• Conduct reproducible research
• Work collaboratively on data science projects
• Comfortable familiariz