Research Specialist (Data Scientist)

Please See Full Job Posting and Apply Here: https://jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/208315

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey is seeking a Research Specialist (Data Scientist) for the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences’ New Jersey Agriculture Experiment Station (NJAES). Reporting to the Associate Director/Director of the NJAES Office of Research Analytics (ORA), the Data Scientist position is responsible for the data management, analysis, and visualization efforts within the office. This position is responsible for the data analysis efforts of the NJADAPT Program which focuses on developing new datasets, analysis efforts, and visualizations to support the various web applications utilizing interactive web-mapping, analytical tools, and data-driven snapshots/dashboards around the impacts of climate change on New Jersey. In addition, the Data Scientist position will also be a key team member on a grant-funded project from the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management developing datasets and analytical workflows to support the development of Hazard Management Plans at the State, County, and Municipal level.

Responsibilities

• Data analysis responsibilities will focus on the analytical efforts, both spatial and statistical, needed to develop new and potentially innovative datasets that provide insight into the potential impacts of climate change on various demographic, environmental, industry-specific, or critical infrastructure assets in New Jersey; develop documentation for these datasets and their methodologies; and perform research into new analysis techniques and domains to propose new avenues of data analysis for these program.
• Works among a team of faculty and staff within these two programs and will be expected to participate in various project meetings, providing their knowledge and expertise to support project efforts, and present data and applications to various stakeholders.
• Oversees student or part-time employees as needed in support of projects.
• Data visualization responsibilities will focus on developing appropriate data visualizations for both spatial and database-driven datasets that will be incorporated into various public informatic applications developed for these programs; ensuring that these visualizations support the communication of data to stakeholders to support understanding and decision-making.
• Data management responsibilities will focus on developing a data management protocol to maintain and expand the large sets of spatial and tabular data that are utilized by the NJADAPT and OEM programs; ensuring that data remains up-to-date, has complete and appropriate metadata and documentation, procedures for integrating new datasets, and publication of datasets for use in applications and public access.
• In addition, given the focus on supporting public informatic platforms, the Data Scientist position will also have the opportunity to train under ORA application development staff to develop their coding skills and allow for independent development of web mapping, reporting and dashboard applications as their skills allow.
• The position will be responsible for the entire life cycle of data within the two programs and will have three primary focuses: data management, data analysis, and data visualization.

Minimum Education and Experience

• Master’s degree preferably in data science, public informatics, data informatics, mathematics, statistics or other related field; or Bachelor’s degree with at least 2 years experience working in data science related field.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Experience using geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial datasets.
• Experience documenting datasets including the creation or metadata or methodology documents.
• Ability to work independently, develop analytical approaches and workplans, and utilize best practices for data creation and management.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with datasets related to climate change, demographics, planning, and environmental data.
• Experience utilizing machine learning techniques to develop explanatory or predictive models for datasets.
• Experience utilizing python scripting to automate GIS analytical workflows.
• Advanced knowledge of ESRI ArcGIS platform including ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, and analytical toolkits such as Spatial Analyst and Spatial Statistics.