A small team tackling big issues

We're inspired by amazing talent, passionate about data, and excited about developing applications with a broader social purpose. We operate in an intellectually stimulating and collegial environment filled with opportunities for advancement.

Please send your application to careers@voxpoplabs.com

Updated June 11, 2021

Open Positions

Lead Data Scientist

Location: Remote
Term: Full-time, Permanent
Salary: $80,000 to $120,000 p.a. + Benefits
Start by: August 3, 2021

The company

Vox Pop Labs is a certified social enterprise that builds innovative digital products and services to help people make more informed decisions. We use data science to convey information to the public in ways which are at once easily accessible, empirically rigorous, and profoundly personalized.

For more than a decade Vox Pop Labs has been working to advance civic engagement, political representation, and democratic participation with initiatives such as Vote Compass, which has been used by millions of people in dozens of elections worldwide.

Vox Pop Labs has delivered numerous other successful digital products while also developing a burgeoning public opinion research practice with a focus on politics, public policy, and public affairs. More recently the company has expanded to include decision optimization products beyond the political domain and is presently developing a new vertical around decision optimization related to post-secondary education.

Headquartered at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, the Vox Pop Labs team is remotely distributed across Canada and worldwide.

The role

As lead data scientist you will be the most senior member of the data science team. This is a role which will involve managing direct reports, working with other team leads, liaising with project partners, and reporting directly to the CEO. As with all team leads at Vox Pop Labs, you will also be an individual contributor to both new and ongoing projects with partners in sectors such as media, government, and academia. You will work with a close-knit team in a flexible and supportive environment made up of smart, passionate people doing meaningful work. 

In your capacity as lead data scientist you will:

  • Apply methodological innovations to challenging research questions
  • Develop and implement statistical and machine learning models in web applications
  • Design and implement end-to-end data pipelines
  • Analyze survey data
  • Report, visualize and communicate results of data analysis
  • Automate production of analytics where possible
  • Manage complex databases
  • Contribute to academic research
  • Proactively identify and champion projects that improve internal processes
  • Partner closely with colleagues on the leadership team to influence product decisions
  • Define and advance best practices within data science and product teams

You’re a great fit if you:

  • Are solution-oriented with an interest in difficult and complex social and data science problems
  • Are detailed oriented and committed to producing high calibre work
  • Have excellent time management skills, the ability to accurately scope a project, and always deliver on time
  • Have the ability to maintain focus on the task at hand and see it through to completion
  • Have excellent communication skills with both internal and external stakeholders
  • Have a graduate degree in data science, statistics, economics, computational social science, or a related field
  • Have a strong working knowledge of and experience with the R programming language
  • Have experience working with R Markdown (e.g. knitting of dynamic documents) 
  • Have a strong working knowledge of and experience with Python and SQL
  • Have both theoretical as well as working familiarity and experience with statistical methods such as factor analysis, PCA, item-response-theory, ideal points, regression, dimensionality reduction, clustering, Bayesian statistics, etc.
  • Have both theoretical as well as working familiarity and experience with supervised machine learning methods such as random forest, boosting, Linear Discriminant Analysis, SVM, neural networks, etc.

As an equal opportunity employer, we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. 

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Candidates are open to apply for this role by emailing their cover letter and curriculum vitae to careers@voxpoplabs.com with the e-mail subject: “Lead Data Scientist Position”. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and so we encourage you to apply as early as possible.