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Job Category:
Academic Staff
Employment Type:
Regular
Job Profile:
Data Scientist II
Job Summary:
The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute (UWPHI) accelerates capacity to create equitable conditions for everyone to be healthy by advancing knowledge, practice, policy, and systems change across sectors.
UWPHI seeks a Data Scientist to help develop tools and resources that focus on the drivers of health and health equity across communities. This role combines rigorous statistical analysis with modern data science practices, including use of GitHub for version control, collaboration, and reproducible analyses. The successful candidate will work with large, complex datasets to generate actionable insights on population health for public health and health care audiences. Using tools such as R, Python and SQL, the Data Scientist will help design, document, and share analytical workflows and interactive dashboards that inform local decision-making. Ideal candidates are detail-oriented, collaborative, and committed to high-quality, open, and policy-relevant research.
This position may require some work to be performed in-person, onsite, at a designated campus work location. Some work may be performed remotely, at an offsite, non-campus work location.
Applicants for this position will be considered for the following titles Data Scientist II or Data Scientist III. The title is determined by the experience and qualifications of the finalist.
University sponsorship is not available for this position, including transfers of sponsorship and TN visas. The selected applicant will be responsible for ensuring their continuous eligibility to work in the United States (i.e. a citizen or national of the United States, a lawful permanent resident, a foreign national authorized to work in the United States without the need of an employer sponsorship) on or before the effective date of appointment. This position is an ongoing position that will require continuous work eligibility. If you are selected for this position, you must provide proof of work authorization and eligibility to work.
Candidates who demonstrate the following knowledge, skills, and abilities will be given first consideration
- Ability to identify data needs, and experience curating data from a variety of sources, assessing limitations and data quality, to manage, aggregate, and document for a particular use.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to independently problem solve and adapt
- Ability to work in a hybrid work environment with various stakeholders, both internally and externally
Key Job Responsibilities:
- Composes and assembles reproducible workflows and reports to clearly articulate patterns to researchers and/or administrators
- Prepares data sets for analysis including cleaning/quality assurance, transformations, restructuring, and integration of multiple data sources
- Documents approaches to address research questions and contributes to the establishment of reproducible research methodologies and analysis workflows
- Independently identifies and implements appropriate data science techniques to find data patterns and answer research questions chosen by the lead researcher including data visualization, statistical analysis, machine learning, and data mining
- Organizes and automates project steps for data preparation and analysis
Department:
School of Medicine and Public Health, Population Health Institute
The UW Population Health Institute (UWPHI) works to improve the health of all people in Wisconsin and beyond by conducting research and providing technical assistance to policymakers, practitioners, and communities. UWPHI works toward a world where we value each other, honor our connectedness, and build communities where everyone can thrive.
Compensation:
The starting salary for the position is $85,000 annually; but is negotiable based on experience and qualifications.
Employees in this position can expect to receive benefits such as generous vacation, holidays, and sick leave; competitive insurances and savings accounts; retirement benefits. For more information, refer to the campus benefits webpage. SMPH Faculty /Academic Staff Benefits Flyer 2026
Required Qualifications:
- At least five years of relevant experience in health-related applied research, statistics, and analytics.
- Advanced proficiency with statistical software and programming languages, specifically Python and R.
- Experience using and managing workflows in open-source platforms like GitHub, for version control, code management and collaboration.
- Proficiency in interactive web dashboards and applications built with tools such as Shiny, Quarto, Streamlit or Dash for visualizing and disseminating data.
- Experience manipulating and analyzing a variety of datasets including, national mortality, community health, health indicators and outcomes, including non-traditional data sources such as (grassroots reporting/social media mining).
- Experience developing analytic approaches to support continued improvement of data management, analysis, visualization and presentation, including the development of data quality frameworks.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Proficiency in SQL for querying, transforming and optimizing large relational databases.
- Strong understanding of cloud data ecosystems, including cloud storage, data warehousing, data pipelines, and big data processing frameworks. Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP and tools like Snowflake, Spark, and Databricks is highly desirable.
- Familiarity with developing and sustaining processes for efficient data extraction, including for example building an Application Programing Interface (API) and automated ETL pipelines.
- Ability to identify data needs, and experience curating data from a variety of sources, assessing limitations and data quality, to manage, aggregate, and document for a particular use.
- Experience or interest in integrating Generative AI/LLMs to enhance data analysis and to build conversational tools (e.g., chatbots) that help public users easily explore web-based data products.
Education:
Data Scientist II: Master’s Degree in Population Health, Epidemiology, Data Science, or related field, is preferred.
Data Scientist III: Ph.D. in Population Health, Epidemiology, Data Science, or related field, is preferred.
How to Apply:
For the best experience completing your application, we recommend using Chrome or Firefox as your web browser.
To apply for this position, select either “I am a current employee” or “I am not a current employee” under Apply Now. You will then be prompted to upload your application materials.
Important: The application has only one attachment field. Upload the following documents in that field, either as a single combined file or as multiple files in the same upload area.
• Cover letter
• Resume
Your cover letter should address how your training and experience aligns with the required and preferred qualifications listed above. Application reviewers will rely on these written materials to determine which applicants move forward in the process. References will be requested from final candidates. All applicants will be notified once the search concludes and a candidate is selected
Contact Information:
Brittany Brown, brittany.brown@wisc.edu, 608-265-2978
Relay Access (WTRS): 7-1-1. See RELAY_SERVICE for further information.
Institutional Statement on Diversity:
Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background - people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, including but not limited to, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, pregnancy, disability, or status as a protected veteran and other bases as defined by federal regulations and UW System policies. We promote excellence by acknowledging skills and expertise from all backgrounds and encourage all qualified individuals to apply. For more information regarding applicant and employee rights and to view federal and state required postings, visit the Human Resources Workplace Poster website.
To request a disability or pregnancy-related accommodation for any step in the hiring process (e.g., application, interview, pre-employment testing, etc.), please contact the Divisional Disability Representative (DDR) in the division you are applying to. Please make your request as soon as possible to help the university respond most effectively to you.
Employment may require a criminal background check. It may also require your references to answer questions regarding misconduct, including sexual violence and sexual harassment.
The University of Wisconsin System will not reveal the identities of applicants who request confidentiality in writing, except that the identity of the successful candidate will be released. See Wis. Stat. sec. 19.36(7).
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