Data Scientist

Data ScientistWorkhelix is looking for a Data Scientist to own the analytical engine behind Nucleus, our core product, reporting directly to the Head of Engineering.That engine starts by taking in different customer data sources and reconciling them into a structured, unified model. From there it runs the analyses that identify where AI can create value and how a company's current practices line up against those opportunities. The output is specific, actionable guidance: what to do next, for which teams, and why.You will own that work end to end. You will also extend it; customers arrive with questions our existing analyses don't answer, and part of the job is deciding when to adapt something we have and when to build something new.This is a production engineering role as much as an analytical one.

You are not building notebooks for someone else to productionize. You write the code that ships, runs in containers, calls external services, and executes in our cloud infrastructure. You work in parallel with our product engineers and forward-deployed engineers, in their codebases as well as yours.It is also a force-multiplier role. A meaningful part of your impact will come from building internal tools and raising the analytical fluency of the whole company, so that strategists, engineers, and leadership can answer their own questions instead of queuing behind you.You are the only data scientist, so you set the roadmap.

You will gather needs from forward-deployed strategists and product engineers, spot the patterns showing up across customers, decide what matters most, and sequence the work. This is an individual contributor role today with a clear path to leading a team as it grows.Key Responsibilities:Own the analytical pipelineOwn the data mart and the ETL that unifies disparate customer systems into a single model our analyses can run againstBuild and maintain the AI assessment: task decomposition, task-level AI acceleration scoring, and comparison against observed AI usageDesign new analyses, adapted or custom, to answer questions specific customers bring usShip it as productWrite production code in Python and SQL that runs as part of the product, not alongside itOrchestrate analytical workloads in cloud infrastructure (containers, step functions, external APIs)Contribute directly to our product and platform codebasesTurn analysis into decisionsBuild the visualizations and narratives that make findings land with technical and executive audiences alikeWork with customer stakeholders and internal teams to make sure methods are understood, trusted, and acted onUplevel the companyBuild internal tools that let others run their own analyses and decide what those tools should beRaise the analytical bar across the organizationSet directionTranslate needs from forward-deployed strategists and product engineers into a prioritized data science roadmapIdentify problems recurring across customers and decide what becomes core product versus custom workWhat We Value:Willingness to own your work all the way into production on cloud infrastructure, including containerized and orchestrated workloads. Direct experience with AWS or equivalent is great; a track record of learning unfamiliar technical territory and getting it right is equally goodStrong data visualization and narrative skills; you can make a complex method legible to people who will never read the codeComfort reading current academic literature and translating it into something that generates value in practiceJudgment about when the simple approach captures most of the value, and the discipline to ship it rather than overbuildThoughtful, self-aware use of AI in your own work: you move fast with it, you know where your own gaps are, and you own every decision it touches rather than deferring to itCommunication that earns trust with engineers, executives, and customer stakeholders. Prior client-facing experience is welcome but not requiredWhat you bring:5+ years in data science, applied research, or a closely related field, with a demonstrated record of work that changed what a business did; not just analyses that were interesting, but analyses that were acted onRecognized as a go-to voice on method and rigor wherever you've worked: the person others bring hard analytical questions to, and who sets the standard for how that work gets doneStrong programmatic thinking: structure, abstraction, failure modes, and architectural tradeoffs applied comfortably in Python and SQL.

We care less about syntax than about whether you reason well about how code should be built, which matters more, not less, when AI is writing some of itStrong data modeling instincts and experience with modern transformation or semantic layer tooling (dbt, Looker, or similar)Depth across machine learning and predictive analytics, NLP including text embeddings and inference, and clustering methods such as hierarchical clusteringWorking knowledge of causal inference from observational data and quasi-experimental designWhat Success Looks Like:First 30 days:Understand the pipeline and data model end to end, how it works, where it's fragile, and why it was built the way it wasExplain what Workhelix does and why it matters without jargon, to a customer or a colleagueMeet the strategists and engineers who depend on this work and heard what customers are actually asking forRun analytical work independently, including for customers whose data doesn't fit the existing shapeHave opinions about what's missing and where the method or the pipeline is weakestBy 60 days:Made real contributions to the methods themselves, not just run the ones that existSomething you built is in production and running against customer dataShaping the data science roadmap and able to defend your priorities against competing asksComfortable fielding methodology questions from internal teams and from customer stakeholdersKnow which recurring customer questions should become core product and which should stay customBy 90 days:Own the data science roadmap and the sequencing behind itOther people can depend on what you've built, in product and internallyAt least one piece of this work is legible enough that someone outside data science can answer their own question with itSet the standard for analytical rigor at Workhelix, people bring you hard questions, and the answers hold upBase salary range 184K - 222K + Equity + Health BenefitsWhat You'll Get:Competitive compensation package and benefits.Chance to learn and collaborate with some of the most famous researchers in the AI and digital economy space: Andrew Ng, Erik Brynjolfsson, Andy McAfee, and Daniel Rock.The unique opportunity to help build a company, culture, and products from the ground up with a team that values healthy working practices.A high-trust, high-autonomy work environment.At Workhelix, we stand committed to ensuring an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available without any discrimination. We believe diversity is critical to our success. Selection for employment will solely be based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. We encourage all qualified individuals to apply!