Data Specialist 2

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem-solving skills, and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.

UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits, and natural beauty.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent research organization at the University of Washington (UW). Its mission is to deliver to the world timely, relevant, and scientifically valid evidence to improve health policy and practice. IHME carries out its mission through a range of projects within different research areas including the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD), Injuries, and Risk Factors; Future Health Scenarios; Cost Effectiveness and Efficiency; Resource Tracking; and Impact Evaluations.

IHME is committed to providing the evidence base necessary to help solve the world’s most important health problems. This requires creativity and innovation, which are cultivated by an inclusive, diverse, and equitable environment that respects and appreciates differences, embraces collaboration, and invites the voices of all IHME team members.

IHME has an outstanding opportunity for a Data Specialist II to join the Causes of Death, Shocks, Intermediate Causes and AMR team. This position will work with a dynamic team of researchers, faculty, and staff at all levels on an assigned research team. We are looking for a Data Specialist II who has specialized expertise in the data, methods, and analytic needs pertaining to the team’s research analytic area and strategies to support analysis, presentation, and publication. This role requires an individual who has the ability to code and document code at a high level so that it is repeatable, reliable, and optimized in R, Python, and/or SQL to ensure the team can carry out the work the most efficiently and effectively. The Data Specialist II is needed to develop analytic pipelines self-contained to their team that require someone to provide a high degree of consistent reproducibility, efficiency, and optimization and ensure research-team specific processes maximize the use of central tools and are aligned with common data, cataloguing, and notation practices.

The individual must be adept at navigating complex databases and analytic engines, be able to design and interpret diagnostics, and troubleshoot problems to resolve them. They must be able to independently interpret results to assess their quality and must be able to assess, transform, and utilize a broad array of quantitative data. Frequently, the individual will be given assignments where a desired result is identified but there is no preset path laid for achieving it. The individual therefore must carry out individual planning and problem solving to resolve computational questions and produce results.

This position will additionally work alongside other research staff on complementary projects and will require knowledge, skill sharing, mentorship, and collective problem solving. Overall, the Data Specialist II will be a critical member of an agile, dynamic research team. IHME is a grant funded organization and this position is contingent on project funding.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Research command

• Demonstrates a deep understanding of team-specific analyses, analytic strategies, data and enterprise-wide inputs to interpret whether the results produced are sensible or need improvements.
• Work directly with researchers to identify the source of data used in models and results, understand the context of the data, and ensure that they are relevant to the analyses themselves.

Data management and analytics

• Independently design ways to improve routine computational processes, including the relevant tradeoffs of different approaches, for decision-making purposes.
• Transform and format datasets for use in ongoing analyses. Perform quality checks.
• Transform and standardize datasets from a wide range of inputs such as surveys, vital registration systems, administrative records, and scientific literature.
• Problem-solve computational and analytic challenges by investigating the data, understanding the root questions, and coming up with alternative measurement strategies.
• Develop and optimize team-specific analytic pipelines to reproducibly and efficiently produce team deliverables.
• Enhance and execute analytic engines, statistical models, and tools to carry out functions responsive to the analytic questions to be resolved. Address and improve team-specific analytic strategies that will get used frequently by multiple people within the team.
• Complete novel analytics to answer questions from senior researchers, collaborators, donors, and other stakeholders.
• Assess results and provide input on validity.
• Standardize code in local (i.e. team-specific) methods to draw upon centrally maintained databases and tools. Demonstrate understanding of code functionality and relate it to the analytic strategy.
• Ensure team specific processes maximize the use of central tools and are aligned with common data, cataloguing, and notation practices.
• Ensure team upholds Institute-wide coding and data standards.

General

• Provide technical and analytic mentorship to junior employees. May lead the work of others.
• Communicate clearly and effectively while contributing as a member of the Institute.
• Work closely with other team members to assist with relevant tasks, facilitate learning new skills, and help resolve emerging problems on different projects.
• Serve as a resource to others in explaining analytic approaches, describing data, and instructing how to implement code. Participate in and/or lead internal trainings.

Other duties as assigned

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s degree in social sciences, engineering, computer science, or related field plus five years’ related experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Equivalent education/experience will substitute for all minimum qualifications except when there are legal requirements, such as a license/certification/registration.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

• Demonstrated expertise in developing code in R, Python, SQL, or other coding language.
• Previous experience providing successful coding and analytical mentorship to others.
• Demonstrated self-motivation and evidence of self-direction. Agility with detailed information and data. Demonstrated flexibility and mature communication skills with an ability to thrive in a fast-paced, energetic, highly creative, and entrepreneurial environment.
• Ability to learn new information quickly and to apply analytic skills to better understand complex information in a systematic way.
• Strong quantitative aptitude and agility making sense of new data.
• Direct experience with quantitative data from a wide range of disparate sources, including surveys, registries, administrative data, vital registration systems, and research studies.
• Deep understanding and experience with processing large datasets used for mortality and morbidity estimation undertaken at IHME. Ability to teach and train others on the major tenets, principles, and purpose of a subset of the analytic work.
• Experience interpreting results and developing diagnostics in order to help manage quality control system of the input data and results.
• Ability to compartmentalize, illustrate, and explain how code implements analytic strategies.
• Interest in global health, population health, and/or ways in which quantitative research and data science can be used to create valuable global public goods.
• A commitment to working alongside others at IHME to illuminate the health impacts of systemic racism and to work within IHME to make our organization more diverse and inclusive. See IHME’s DEI statement here: https://www.healthdata.org/about/dei.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

• Weekend and evening work sometimes required.
• This position is open to anyone authorized to work in the US.
• Working internationally is only allowed for IHME sponsored work that requires in-country participation.
• Office is located in Seattle, Washington. This position is eligible to work fully remote in the US; work schedule required to overlap 50% of IHME office hours, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific Time as agreed upon between employee and supervisor.