The Role: 

The Associate Data Scientist, Search and Recommendations will use data to research and investigate product features and content that drive the highest impact in terms of user engagement. These analyses will be used to drive the product development and feature design into our algorithmic models. You will work to understand data streams, and provide insights that will influence our algorithms. You will also help evaluate algorithms developed by the team, and will be responsible for deeply understanding metrics and how the feature is driving our business goals using data. You will be evaluating A/B tests once the algorithms roll out, and will monitor model metrics and performance. Reporting to the Director of Data Science, you’ll work closely with our product manager, engineers, and data scientists to roll out the best search and recommendations experience for our users. The insights you drive could also be used to push the strategic development and roadmap of the team.

Why You’ll Love This Role: 

Your work will directly enable teachers’ and students’ ability to find and discover engaging, aligned content to inspire learning in K-12 classrooms nationwide, and will power content personalization engines. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn about search and recommendations technologies and strategies, and the results of your work will help drive the strategic roadmap for the search and recommendation team as well as other teams across the product organization. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn and work on NLP techniques with an experienced team.

Why We’ll Love You:

You have 1-2 years of experience wrangling data and producing insights and data visualizations, and setting up data environments. You have a demonstrated aptitude in SQL or a scripting language (Python preferred). While not required, experience in education and/or an understanding of basic data science and machine learning principles is preferred. You’re a product-minded thinker who never settles for simply the requirements given, but uses critical thinking to challenge requests that aren’t fully formed. You’re able to leverage your communication skills to translate metrics and business outcomes to a variety of audiences when describing proof of success of products released. You always think about users first and find insights to benefit user experience. 

 About Newsela:

One of the fastest growing tech companies in K-12 education, Newsela was founded on the principle that while every child may have unique learning preferences, they all deserve a rich learning experience that ignites a love of learning. We built our platform based on learning science research to deliver the most engaging, authentic content to modernize how teaching happens in the classroom. Along with interactive assessments and tools, we provide teachers with digital content at five reading levels -- from +100 of the best sources -- that is relevant to the diverse backgrounds and interests of their students. Since we started in 2013, we’ve established a presence in 90% of U.S. K-12 schools and over 2.5M teachers and 37M students have registered with Newsela.