Lead Data Scientist - Spectrum Reach

At Spectrum Reach, we help advertising clients harness industry leading research and marketing data and to exceed their advertising needs across multiple media platforms. We do this better than anyone else in the industry by providing our clients with access to Spectrum Reach's unique marketing platforms of choice. From traditional commercial advertising to exciting new possibilities in interactive media and multi-screen solutions, Spectrum Reach's consultative team brings more than 22,000 advertising clients world class creative and innovative advertising solutions.

The Lead Data Scientist is responsible for leading the development of data-driven solutions for Spectrum Reach's advertising sales business. Utilizes analytical, statistical, and programming skills to clean, aggregate, and analyze large data sets and interpret results. This position requires a strong command of statistical techniques machine learning algorithms, and big data technologies. The ideal candidate will possess a demonstrated practical ability to determine where to invest time, and depending on the assignment, to build sustainable predictive models and services or to synthesize actionable findings and present findings to audiences with diverse agendas and varying levels of technical expertise.

• Actively and consistently support all efforts to simplify and enhance the customer experience.
• Plan and lead the complete analytics life-cycle for problem solving, including: requirements gathering, problem formulation, data grooming, data exploration, model prototyping, model validation, and algorithm productionalization.
• Leverage knowledge in analytical and statistical algorithms to help stakeholders explore methods to improve their business. Utilize experience and feedback to recommend options during the development/research/analysis phase.
• Lead large-scale exploratory data analyses for new data sources or new uses for existing data sources. Establish links across existing data sources and find new, interesting data correlations.
• Plan effectively to ensure analytics products are flexible, modular, and both leverage and contribute to the team's existing reusable code base.
• Exercise thought leadership and discretion in tailoring the tools, approaches, and data used to meet the needs of the particular problem.
• Responsible for interpretation of results - for both causal inferences and predictive effectiveness.
• Synthesize appropriate recommendations for action and changes.
• Present findings, suggested actions and changes to a broad audience, and manage follow-ups and execution.
• Help teach and explain techniques and tools used to a broad set of business-intelligence, data, and analytics professionals with varied backgrounds.
• Create project plans to help team achieve defined project goals within deadlines; proactively communicate status and escalate issues as needed.
• Mentor and train junior team members as well as assist leadership in setting strategic vision.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, statistics, operations research or equivalent combination of education and experience

Experience

7+ years of experience in data manipulation and statistical modeling as a Scientist, Consultant, Architect, DBA or Engineer

7+ years of experience in SQL, R or Python programming

Skills

Mastery of R and/or Python for advanced analytics and AI/ML applications

Expertise with SQL and large datasets, including efficient data transformation and storage at scale

Strong understanding of data architecture and data warehousing

Proficiency with commercial cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure or GCP

Solid theoretical foundation in major machine learning models including regression, classification, clustering, neural networks and large language models

Experience with multi-series time series forecasting at scale

Command of advanced mathematics including calculus, PDEs, probability and statistics, with ability to independently learn new concepts

Effective synthesis and presentation skills for sharing results and recommendations

Ability to communicate complex findings to varied audiences

Demonstrated commitment to expanding skill set and fostering learning within the team

Preferred Skills/Abilities and Knowledge
Experience in the advertising sales, cable and/or telecommunications industry
Advanced Python knowledge and deep experience in the AI/ML ecosystem surrounding Python
Experience in Operations-research/optimization, in particular mixed-integer programming, multi-objective optimization, CPLEX and Gurobi solver configuration and performance tuning
Experience in AWS ecosystem (including EMR, Glue, Athena, SageMaker, Bedrock)
Experience in Snowflake architecture, resource optimization, and performance tuning
Experience in distributed computing paradigms and parallel processing, including Spark optimization techniques and performance tuning
Experience in MLOps, including end-to-end ML pipelines with automated training, validation, and deployment, model registry systems for versioning and governance
Experience with development of systems using generative AI, reasoning models and agentic AI methods.

Preferred Education
Master's Degree in related field