PRINCIPAL DATA SCIENTIST

As a Principal data scientist, you will create forward-thinking solutions for the next generation of journalism. Our team is at the heart of The Post's AI strategies to build intelligent and adaptable personalized news experiences and business solutions capable of powering the world's most high-scale digital media platform. This role is equal parts scientist, statistician & software developer.

Motivation

• You value world-class journalism and are eager to immerse yourself in features and projects that support that mission.
• You are a technically savvy critical thinker who enjoys problem-solving.
• You receive feedback enthusiastically and thrive in a collaborative environment.
• You are a born self-starter with an earnest work ethic.
• You are eager to evolve and grow your skill set by learning and sharing the latest machine-learning technologies.

Responsibilities

• As a vital project team member, you will play a key role in addressing business challenges. This involves defining the problems, establishing the intended approach and quantitative methods, assessing analytical solutions, and implementing them into production.
• Identify data science projects that bring value to site visitors, the newsroom, and the advertisement team.
• Present project findings to technical communities in the DC area and to a broader audience within research and business communities at various conferences.
• Interact with internal and external peers and managers to exchange complex information in areas of specialization.
• Document projects, including business objectives, data gathering and processing, leading approaches, final algorithm, detailed set of results, and analytical metrics. Create materials to articulate project findings and effectively communicate these findings to business audiences.
• Evaluate commercial and open-source techniques in Machine Learning, Data Mining, NLP, and Analytics.
• Build scalable and high-performance Machine Learning and Data Mining algorithms.
• Rapidly test hypotheses by developing prototypes, running offline experiments, and online A/B tests.
• Generate actionable insights by analyzing large amounts of data and using analytical rigor, predictive modeling, cluster analysis, temporal analysis, social network analysis, and other techniques.
• Generate reports and visualizations to provide insight into the workings of the production systems.
• Mentors less experienced members of the team.

Qualifications

EDUCATION

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, or Mathematics required with emphasis on data mining, NLP, or machine learning.

EXPERIENCE

• 6+ years of professional experience in NLP systems, predictive modeling, recommendations/personalization, clustering, classification, sentiment analysis, time series, and deep learning 

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS

• Ability to act with independent judgment.
• 5+ years of programming experience in Python, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras 
• 5+ years of experience with cloud technologies such as AWS
• 3+ years of experience in language models

Wherever you are in your life or career, The Washington Post offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits for every step of your journey:

• Competitive medical, dental and vision coverage

• Company-paid pension and 401(k) match

• Three weeks of vacation and up to three weeks of paid sick leave

• Nine paid holidays and two personal days

• 20 weeks paid parental leave for any new parent

• Robust mental health resources

• Backup care and caregiver concierge services

• Gender affirming services

• Pet insurance

• Free Post digital subscription

• Leadership and career development programs

Benefits may vary based on the job, full-time or part-time schedule, location, and collectively bargained status.

The Post strives to provide its readers with high-quality, trustworthy news and information while constantly innovating. That mission is best served by a diverse, multi-generational workforce with varied life experiences and perspectives. All cultures and backgrounds are welcomed. 

The innovation doesn’t end in the Newsroom – dozens of teams power The Washington Post.  We are now hiring the next innovator – how will you Impact Tomorrow?

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