Data Scientist

About the Role

This Data Scientist will play a key role in developing data science tools that support smart decision making in digital campaigns, both internally and externally. This person will help to build a range of analytics pipelines that will involve statistical, machine learning, and LLM-based methods. 

This role is ideal for someone with a strong foundation in data science who is excited by innovation — particularly in the use of agentic and AI-driven development—and is eager to apply those skills in service of progressive causes. This person will also support analyses for internal teams, leadership, or partners and should be excellent at communicating technical concepts to a variety of audiences. They will work closely with teams across the organization and report directly to the Director of R&D. 

This is a remote position. The role includes occasional travel, and working hours are 10AM–6PM ET regardless of location. We are not currently registered to do business in all locations. In particular, we are not currently accepting applicants based in Florida, Hawaii, Missouri, and Texas due to regulatory considerations.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement efficient, modular data science pipelines using modern software engineering practices, with a strong emphasis on agentic and LLM-based tooling.
• Contribute to the development of models and analytics workflows across a variety of use cases, including audience targeting, social or media listening, and natural language processing.
• Maintain and continuously improve Priorities USA’s analytics codebases to support scale, reproducibility, and performance.
• Evaluate model outputs and analytics deliverables to ensure rigor, relevance, and political utility.
• Participate in code review and collaborative development processes in a cross-functional team.
• Lead or support research initiatives that define what data is needed to answer strategic questions and how best to analyze it.
• Think critically about what data is saying to guide applications within a political context. 
• Assess and improve the quality of LLM output, applying human judgment, critique and iterative development to produce trustworthy results.
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of infrastructure needed for strategic analytics and operational efficiency.
• Collaborate with the internal surveys team to streamline and improve survey reporting processes.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience working with political data.
• Proficient in SQL, and either Python or R.
• Demonstrated ability to apply statistical and data science methods in real-world contexts, with a preference for political, advocacy or voter mobilization campaigns. 
• Interest in or experience using AI tools, including LLMs and agentic software frameworks.
• Experience interacting with databases and cloud computing platforms (e.g. AWS, GCP).
• Experience coordinating across multiple stakeholders, with strong communication and project management skills.
• Proven ability to produce clear, timely reports and recommendations in a fast-paced campaign or advocacy setting.
• Experience working with voter file data for analysis, targeting, or audience development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with survey research methods, statistical weighting, and related concepts.
• Familiarity with prompt engineering, context engineering, and agentic evaluation.
• Experience with designing and analyzing RCT experiments.
• Experience working with digital advertising, or media performance data, or an understanding of social listening, and media consumption contexts.
• Experience developing front-end applications or dashboards.
• Hands-on experience using Google BigQuery and deploying related Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services (e.g., cloud composer, cloud run, cloud scheduler, cloud storage, google workflows, secrets manager, looker.

Compensation and Benefits

The budget for this position is $90,000-$110,000 commensurate with experience.

Priorities USA’s competitive benefits package includes 100% of health care premium covered for the employee and 75% for dependents, a 401K retirement plan with up to 4% employer match, paid holidays, and flexible PTO. Employees also have access to cybersecurity protection benefits.

Equal Opportunity Employer

People of color, women, people with disabilities, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply. If you need an accommodation for a disability to apply to this position, please let us know by emailing peopleops@priorities.org.

Application Process Information

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Applications should include a resume and responses to the application questions. The hiring process for selected candidates will consist of a phone screen, take-home assessment (compensated), and a set of final round interviews. Most processes will occur over 3-4 weeks with a target start date in October. 

This is a cycle based position, ending at the end of 2026.