Data Scientist

About CareerVillage.org

CareerVillage is a fast-scaling tech nonprofit at the intersection of education, equity, and technology. We believe everyone deserves access to high-quality career guidance. That’s why we’ve built Coach, an AI-powered career navigation tool designed to help learners and job-seekers reach their full potential.

In this Data Scientist role, you will help design, build, evaluate, and deploy data science solutions that power product decisions and user-facing experiences across two products: Coach (featured in Fast Company and Forbes), and CareerVillage.org, our flagship crowdsourcing platform supporting millions of learners, over 200,000 professionals, and thousands of teachers.

CareerVillage is dedicated to democratizing access to career information and advice for underrepresented people. As part of our Data, Research, Evaluation, and Metrics Team, you will use data science to unlock better learner outcomes, rigorously evaluate AI-powered systems, and help the organization make smarter, more impactful decisions at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy predictive models that improve learner outcomes and product performance, including user behavior prediction, recommendations, ranking, and classification.
• Develop, own, and continuously improve end-to-end data science workflows, including ongoing model iteration, retraining, and performance monitoring over time.
• Take ownership of existing and new predictive models, diagnosing performance issues, adapting to data or product changes, and iterating to improve real-world impact over time.
• Partner closely with product, engineering, research, and leadership to translate ambiguous questions into data science solutions.
• Work closely with engineering partners to ship, maintain, and iterate on models in production; you will not be expected to build production infrastructure alone.
• Contribute to AI and model evaluation frameworks, including offline metrics, experimentation, and qualitative analysis.
• Analyze large, complex datasets to identify patterns, opportunities, and risks across our platforms.
• Communicate modeling approaches, assumptions, tradeoffs, and results clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Write technical documentation, reports, and presentations that drive product and organizational decisions.
• Support responsible, ethical, and equitable use of data and AI in education-focused products.

About You

We know that applying for a job can be intimidating, and we value diverse paths into data science. The ideal candidate is:

• Mission-driven and excited to apply data science to social impact.
• Interested in or experienced with education, workforce development, or serving underserved learners.
• Curious about Generative AI systems and grounded in building reliable, measurable predictive models that perform well in production.
• Comfortable working cross-functionally and bringing clarity to complex, open-ended problems.
• Oriented toward shipping and learning from real users, not just building models in isolation.

What you bring

We value demonstrated impact and real-world experience over titles or formal credentials.

• 3+ years of experience in data science, machine learning, or a closely related applied role.
• Experience independently developing, evaluating, and deploying data science or machine learning models in real-world settings.
• Experience iterating on models after initial deployment, including responding to performance drift, changing data, or evolving product needs.
• Strong proficiency in Python for data analysis and modeling (e.g., pandas, numpy, scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar).
• Experience working with SQL and production datasets.
• Familiarity with model evaluation, validation, and monitoring over time.
• Experience with data cleaning, feature engineering, and exploratory analysis at scale.
• Comfort collaborating with engineers to productionize models (e.g., APIs, batch jobs, pipelines).
• Clear written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong organizational, reliability, and collaboration skills that make you a great teammate.

Why work with us?

We work to ensure you have everything you need to thrive in your role and on your team, including:

• An opportunity to improve real lives, solve hard problems, and make an impact on the world.
• A chance to see the impact of your work on millions of people.
• A chance to work with like-minded people who are working together on something ambitious and purposeful.
• A fantastic and supportive organizational culture.
• Salary ranging from $105,000 - $125,000 depending on experience.
• 401K matching.
• $1,500 Professional Development budget.
• Very generous vacation policy.

Location

We are a remote-first organization and can hire for this role in the USA. Team members must be able to work during business hours, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., in the continental US time zones. Hybrid working is optional in NYC. CareerVillage's HQ is in Palo Alto, CA. At this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants must have independent authorization to work in the United States.

Key skills/competency

• Predictive Modeling
• Machine Learning
• Data Analysis
• Model Deployment
• AI Evaluation
• Python
• SQL
• Feature Engineering
• Cross-functional Collaboration
• Ethical AI