Pew Research Center’s Data Labs team uses data science tools and techniques to produce original research. The team contributes to the Center’s reputation for experimentation and tells interesting stories about the behaviors and life experiences of the public

The Associate Directoris responsible formanaging the team’s junior and mid-level data scientists; weighing in on technical and methodological decisions across the team’s various internally- andexternally-facingprojects; andestablishingresearch standards and best practices across the teamThe ideal candidate will have a strong background in social science researchpairedwitha deep understanding of thetechnicaland methodological decisionsneeded toproduceresearch that is on par with the Center’s standards

While the Associate Director will have opportunitiesfor individual research contributions,theprimaryfocusof the role isfacilitatingthebroaderresearchportfolioof the team.This position reports to the Managing Director of Data Labs.

Primary Responsibilities

Team management

• Responsible for day-to-day management and career development of junior and mid-levelresearch staff

• Publicspokespersonfor the teamat conferences,the mediaand elsewhere

• Interface withinternal partners and stakeholders around research production,disseminationand budgeting

Methods,researchstandardsand processguidance

• Works with research staff to select mostappropriate methodsandprojectdesigns for ongoing research efforts.

• Manages the team’s technical toolkit, ensures thatresearchbest practicesare being followed and sufficiently documented.

• Contributes significantly to AI governance and use of LLMsin the research process for the teamandacross the Center

Team strategy

• Helps topitch,selectand refine theteam’s ongoing research portfolioHelpstoshepherd projects from conception toproduction.

• In collaboration with the Managing Director andVP of Methods and Innovation,setsthe overall strategicdirection and focus of the team.

Education/Training/Experience

• PhD-level research experience or equivalent

• Experience leading research teams or managing people preferred

Knowledge and Skills Requirements

• Experience conductingormanaging technicalresearchprojectsusingdiverse data sources(includingweb, social media, text, geographical, and/or audiovisual data)

• Strongunderstanding of the technical infrastructures that enable and supportsocial sciencemethods atscale

• Excellent communication andconflict resolution skills Ability to speak fluently about complex research topics withboth technical and non-technical audiences.

• Experience working withlargedata sets, managing largecomputeworkloads, andmonitoringcloud computing infrastructure such as AWS

• Deepexpertisein applied NLP, including transformer fine-tuning, zero-shotand few-shot classification, LLM prompt engineering, and model evaluation best practices Canarticulateand champion a technical vision that is grounded in social science research

• Experience with multimodal data processing, including audio, video, and image data; familiarity withHuggingFaceecosystem preferred