Data Scientist

Job Summary Our client is seeking a Data Scientist to join their team! This is not a traditional reporting-only position. This person will support advanced analytics, Natural Language Understanding (NLU), conversational experiences and customer interaction data. They will work across the full analytical lifecycle, from locating and extracting data through analyzing trends, improving existing models and creating dashboards that communicate meaningful business insights. This position is W-2 only. We do not work with third-party firms or C2C arrangements for this role. Core Responsibilities• Identify the appropriate data sources needed to answer complex business and customer-experience questions • Extract, join, manipulate and analyze large datasets using SQL, Python and Pandas • Analyze customer interaction, call and speech-transcription data to identify patterns, anomalies and areas for improvement • Monitor, maintain and improve existing NLU, sentiment and machine learning models • Investigate model performance and determine why models are producing specific results • Evaluate how effectively IVR and conversational systems understand customer speech, intent and sentiment • Build, modify and improve algorithms used to analyze customer interactions • Create dashboards, reports and visualizations that clearly communicate trends and findings • Investigate ambiguous data problems and determine the best analytical approach without waiting for a fully defined request • Identify gaps in existing data and work across teams to request additional logging or data capture • Recommend opportunities based on the data and explain what the findings suggest the business should do next • Partner with Product Owners, business leaders and technical teams to translate business questions into analytical approaches • Present complex technical findings in a way that business and technical stakeholders can understand • Help expand the team’s advanced analytics, AI and data science capabilities Required Skills/Experience (Must-Haves)• Strong SQL experience, including locating, querying, joining and analyzing data from multiple sources • Strong Python programming experience for data analysis and data science • Hands-on experience with Pandas and other Python-based data analysis or modeling libraries • Applied experience with data science, machine learning and statistical modeling • Experience building, maintaining, tuning or improving machine learning models • Experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and/or Natural Language Understanding (NLU) • Experience analyzing text, speech, conversational, sentiment or similar unstructured data • Understanding of model performance and the ability to investigate why a model is producing particular results • Experience building dashboards and visualizations with Power BI and/or Tableau • Ability to independently investigate data, recognize trends and translate findings into recommendations • Experience presenting analytical findings to business and technical stakeholders Preferred Skills• Experience with sentiment analysis or sentiment models • Experience with speech analytics, speech-to-text data, conversational AI, chatbots or virtual assistants • Experience with few-shot learning or modeling • Understanding of pragmatic ambiguity and how context affects the interpretation of language, intent or sentiment • Experience with Generative AI, LLMs, RAG or other modern AI technologies • Exposure to Agentic AI, AI-assisted application development or emerging AI development tools • Personal or professional experience experimenting with AI tools to improve analytical or day-to-day workflows • Experience with Grafana, Alteryx, Apache-based tools or similar analytics platforms • Experience with cloud-based data platforms or modern data environments • Experience developing lightweight applications, APIs or web-based analytical tools Key Competencies• This person takes ownership of ambiguous business questions and…