Director, Methodology
The NPD Group

Job Info

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Learning and growing with NPD

Combining consumer surveys, retail point-of-sale data, and cutting-edge analytics, The NPD Group delivers trusted retail industry research to the world's most successful brands and retailers. We also offer careers that reward innovation and provide growth opportunities for forward-thinking problem-solvers who join our team. Speed your career growth, while working with the best and brightest in the market research industry.

Position Overview

The NPD Group is seeking a mid- to senior-level manager with extensive programming experience in R.

Location:

We have offices in many US cities, including: Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; San Diego, CA; Cincinnati, OH; Bentonville, AR; Greensboro, NC; Houston, TX. We also have offices in Toronto and Mexico City.

The Director, Research Science will play a key role in managing the ongoing improvement of our statistical adjustment and modeling methodologies, both in terms of speed/ease and quality. The ideal candidate will be an experienced statistical programmer using R who also has experience managing teams using development methodologies such as Agile, Lean, or Scrum

Overall Responsibilities:

• Manage (and as necessary, perform) statistical program development to build and enhance frameworks for statistical adjustment and modeling.
• Share responsibility for creating/updating requirements, mockups, wireframes, user stories, etc. based on needs, input from stakeholders, and feedback from internal users
• Help guide team in developing new processes in an iterative way, allowing opportunities to get feedback from stakeholders and work out complicated portions of processes early during development
• Manage task assignments (using issue tracker/Kanban boards, etc.) for team consisting of two to six statisticians, programmers, and data scientists of varying experience levels and specialties.
• Directly manage two to three junior to mid-level team members on challenges such as investigating unexpected results and brainstorming alternative methodological solutions.
• Mentor team members via code reviews, pair programming, unit test/acceptance test reviews, and brainstorming sessions.
• Help establish development practices and patterns within the team, such as test-driven development, version control, and use of agile management tools.
• Help manage migrating/rewriting processes (often SAS code, but also sometimes SQL, Python, older R code, or even non-code processes) to new code (primarily written in R, but also potentially Spark, SQL, or Python) and making sure the migration is handled in a safe manner, using unit tests to confirm new code works in an equivalent way to legacy process
• Conduct original research-on-research (e.g., through simulations and/or evaluations of historical data) to improve methodologies, processes, and data integrity for data from surveys, scanner (point-of-sale), receipts, credit card, GPS, and other data sources.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of work experience, with solid breadth and depth of knowledge of statistical and analytic techniques.
• Experience managing development teams. Experience with one or more development methodologies (Agile, Kanban, Lean, Scrum/Scrum Master) preferred.
• Excellent time management and creative problem-solving skills.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience with data analysis in R is required. Experience with additional languages and/or more extensive proficiency preferred.
• Degree in statistics, quantitative social science, computer science, mathematics, or related fields is required. Graduate-level experience preferred.
• Travel (typically

Communication:

The ideal candidate must be able to communicate in a concise and polished manner to diverse audiences of internal or external clients. Most importantly, the candidate must demonstrate the ability to listen and build on other's suggestions.

Relationships:

The ideal candidate must be comfortable and effective when talking with a broad range of decision influencers and candidates, both via remote platforms, and when necessary, in person.

Discipline
The ideal candidate will be competent in managing their time and activities. Candidates must possess a "can-do" perspective in their professional attitude. They will be detail oriented and demonstrate a strong work ethic. They will be sticklers for accuracy in their own work as well as their colleagues. They will be ready to back up their assertions with facts.

The NPD Group, Inc. is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

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