Senior Data Scientist

Job Overview

We need a Senior Data Scientist for a contingent hire based on contract award. The role requires expertise in navigating complex federal and private datasets that do not share schemas or IDs, and a focus on understanding data before modeling.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end data science experiments: assess data readiness, perform clustering and topological risk modeling, enrich with unstructured data, and resolve entity discrepancies.
• Run exploratory data analyses (EDAs) on government-furnished data within a government‑controlled environment: profile completeness, identify schema mismatches, flag gaps, and document data limitations before any model is trained.
• Apply graph analytics such as Leiden community detection, betweenness and eigenvector centrality, motif analysis, temporal cluster detection, and link prediction; explain results in plain English.
• Train interpretable classifiers (logistic regression, gradient‑boosted trees) and Graph Neural Networks (GraphSAGE, GAT) where data allow; use unsupervised anomaly detection when labels are scarce.
• Execute probabilistic entity resolution across biographic, behavioral, and biometric features using tools such as Senzing; handle name transliteration, DOB variation, and fuzzy address matching.
• Implement LLM‑based named entity recognition and relationship extraction on unstructured field text; quantify whether extracted edges meaningfully alter the graph rather than add noise.
• Wrangle messy data and recommend supplemental, de‑identified data sources that would enrich the analysis; document the case for each recommendation so privacy and legal teams can evaluate.
• Document everything so the customer can rerun it later; reproducibility is a hard acceptance criterion, not a “nice to have.”
• Maintain rigorous standards: provide confidence intervals on all outputs, record null findings with equal care, and avoid dashboard theater.

Qualifications

• An active DHS Public Trust clearance at time of hire.
• 7+ years of applied data science experience, with at least 2 years focused on graph analytics or network analysis.
• Strong production‑grade Python skills: pandas, NumPy, scikit‑learn, networkx (or graph‑tool/igraph), and at least one GNN library such as PyTorch Geometric or DGL.
• Real‑world experience with probabilistic record linkage or entity resolution tools such as Senzing, dedupe, FEBRL, Magellan, or a defensible home‑grown Fellegi‑Sunter implementation.
• Comfort working without labels: anomaly detection, positive‑unlabeled learning, isolation forests, autoencoders; know how to evaluate a model lacking clear ground truth.
• Interpretability discipline: SHAP, feature importance, partial dependence plots, and the judgment to select simpler models when appropriate.
• LLM application experience beyond prompt‑and‑pray: entity and relationship extraction on real text with genuine evaluation of extraction quality.
• Statistical maturity: understanding of power analysis, confidence intervals, and avoidance of p‑hacking even when unchecked.
• Ability to present technical findings to non‑technical operational stakeholders without losing nuance.
• Reproducibility hygiene: version control, parameterized pipelines, deterministic seeds, pinned dependencies, and functional READMEs.
• Published research, open‑source contributions, or conference talks in entity resolution, graph ML, or applied causal inference.
• Knowledge of commercial data sources such as LexisNexis, TransUnion, Babel Street, etc.
• A track record of explaining null results to federal subject matter experts without flinching.
• Reputation among teammates for catching pipeline bugs before delivery.

Even if you don’t meet 100 % of the qualifications, we encourage you to apply. At Skyward, we’re focused on hiring individuals with the right skills and passion to grow, not just checking off every box.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (fully paid for employees)
• 15 days of paid leave
• 7 days of sick leave
• 2 days of bereavement leave
• 11 paid federal holidays
• Up to 40 hours for jury duty
• 401(k) with 4 % employer contribution (no vesting period)
• Up to 4 weeks of paid paternity and maternity leave
• Company‑provided laptop
• $5,000 per year for professional development
• $600 per year for technical supplies and equipment
• $2,000 referral bonus
• Life and disability insurance
• HSA and FSA
• Legal Shield and ID Shield voluntary benefits

Offers of employment with Skyward are contingent upon acceptable results of a background investigation.

Applicants must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust security clearance due to the nature of our work as a government contractor.