Sr. Data Scientist

About Benson Hill
Benson Hill empowers innovators to develop more healthy, tasty and sustainable food by unlocking the natural genetic diversity of plants. Benson Hill’s CropOS™ platform combines machine learning and big data with advanced breeding techniques and plant biology to drastically accelerate and simplify the product development process. The CropOS platform allows for more efficient product discovery and development for companies making genetic improvements to Crops impacting the food supply chain. Benson Hill brings a unique and holistic approach to our product and platform development, as we span a broader workflow involving trait and seed development, genome editing, and breeding all the way to creating better ingredients and varieties that tap a strong consumer demand for more flavorful and nutritious fruits and vegetables. More information can be found online at www.bensonhill.com. Follow us on Twitter at @BensonHillInc.

Our Purpose and Core Values

Our Core Values are a set of common principles we share that are fundamental to our company’s identity.

• Be Bold!  We redefine boundaries by providing new solutions to difficult problems. Together we are driven to transform the future and will not allow the fear of failure to prevent us from innovating. We voice our opinions, embrace change, and challenge each other to think creatively.
• Be Inspired! We have purpose in our work-we are curious, engaged, and have fun. We maintain an active learning mindset and are motivated by diverse people and thoughts. We are energized by all innovators and together we aim to make an impact and contribute to building a better world.
• Be Real! We understand who we are, what we want to achieve, and what it takes to get there. We hold each other accountable through timely, candid, and well-intentioned feedback. Together we engage in honest communication and healthy debate that leads to success through true alignment.

Department Overview

The CropOS Department leads the development of Benson Hill’s crop design platform, CropOS™, which combines machine learning and big data with advanced breeding methods, genome editing and plant biology to simplify and accelerate the product development process. The team partners with the Research & Development teams on the development of a portfolio of offerings (commercial product, or platform related) that meet the needs of Benson Hill’s business units.

Position Summary

We are actively seeking an innovative Senior Data Scientist to join the Breeding Innovation team within our rapidly growing CropOS Department. The successful candidate will be responsible for designing and implementing state-of-the-art machine learning prediction and classification models to support decision making related to crop breeding. This person will work closely with Benson Hill breeders, scientists, data engineers, and project leaders to maximize the impact of Benson Hill’s breeding and product development programs.   

You Will:

(Essential Duties and Responsibilities)

• Identify new opportunities for innovation and business improvements through applications of Data Science
• Design and implement state-of-the-art machine learning prediction, classification and optimization models
• Design experiments, analyses, pipelines, and workflows to solve complex business problems
• Collaborate with various internal teams including scientists from other disciplines, data and software engineers, and project leaders
• Guide others in assessing business impact and defining strategy
• Effectively communicate results in written and visual format to other scientists and project stakeholders

You Have:

(Competencies and Qualifications)

Education

• PHD. (or Master’s degree with 5+ years’ experience) in Statistics, Quantitative Genetics, Plant/Animal Breeding, Plant Science, Physics, Chemistry or a closely related field

Experience

• 5-10 years of experience analyzing data across multiple domains and with a variety of business objectives
• Expertise applying machine learning, active learning and statistical models to solve business problems
• Experience designing simulation models for research or business applications
• Experience in benchmarking and model performance evaluation and improvement
• Experience organizing and planning complex projects and owning the outcomes
• Strong