Associate Director, Data Labs

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 Director is responsible for managing the team’s junior and mid-level data scientists; weighing in on technical and methodological decisions across the team’s various internally- and externally-facing projects; and establishing research standards and best practices across the team. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in social science research paired with a deep understanding of the technical and methodological decisions needed to produce research that is on par with the Center’s standards. 

While the Associate Director will have opportunities for individual research contributions, the primary focus of the role is facilitating the broader research portfolio of 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-level research staff. 

• Public spokesperson for the team at conferences, the media and elsewhere. 

• Interface with internal partners and stakeholders around research production, dissemination and budgeting. 

Methods, research standards and process guidance 

• Works with research staff to select most appropriate methods and project designs for ongoing research efforts.  

• Manages the team’s technical toolkit, ensures that research best practices are being followed and sufficiently documented. 

• Contributes significantly to AI governance and use of LLMs in the research process for the team and across the Center.  

Team strategy 

• Helps to pitch, select and refine the team’s ongoing research portfolio. Helps to shepherd projects from conception to production. 

• In collaboration with the Managing Director and VP of Methods and Innovation, sets the overall strategic direction 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 conducting or managing technical research projects using diverse data sources (including web, social media, text, geographical, and/or audiovisual data). 

• Strong understanding of the technical infrastructures that enable and support social science methods at scale. 

• Excellent communication and conflict resolution skills. Ability to speak fluently about complex research topics with both technical and non-technical audiences. 

• Experience working with large data sets, managing large compute workloads, and monitoring cloud computing infrastructure such as AWS. 

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

• Experience with multimodal data processing, including audio, video, and image data; familiarity with HuggingFace ecosystem preferred.