Senior Data Scientist Associate

Children's Funding Project • Washington, DC

1d • $65,000 • Remote

About The Position

Children’s Funding Project is seeking a Senior Data Scientist Associate to join our Fiscal Data Infrastructure Team. You’ll build modern data pipelines to help make sense of messy public budget data by using your expertise with applying pre-trained AI models, LLM APIs, and multi-stage classification pipelines to help us scale our fiscal mapping process to all 50 states by 2028.
The ideal candidate will support the implementation of data quality standards across our fiscal map products, ensuring accuracy, completeness, and consistency. This position will report to the Data Governance Manager, and work with the state, local, federal, and Native Children and Youth fiscal mapping teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field (Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Economics, or similar). Equivalent experience with data projects in professional or internship settings is also welcome.
• Proficiency in Python for data processing and analysis, with experience cleaning and wrangling both structured and unstructured data.
• Experience with SQL and relational databases.
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, or similar large language models in analytical workflows—including prompt engineering and output validation.
• Communicates effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Can translate data findings into clear insights for policy audiences.
• Operates effectively in ambiguity and is comfortable working through problems that don't have clear solutions or established processes.
• Actively learns through experimentation. Views mistakes as opportunities to improve pipelines and processes.
• Interest in public policy, government finance, or work that sits at the intersection of public policy, education, child and youth advocacy).
• Ability to work independently in developing advanced data models and coordination of outputs into cohesive databases.
• Experience with Diversity, Equity, Justice and Belonging (DEJB). Basic understanding of DEJB values, contributing to a respectful and inclusive team environment.
• Strong attention to detail and a passion for ensuring data meet or exceed quality standards.
• Team-oriented attitude with an ability to work independently in a remote environment.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with Hugging Face transformers or similar libraries for text classification tasks (zero-shot classification, sentence embeddings).
• Experience with Azure cloud services (SQL, Blob Storage, Data Factory) or similar platforms.
• Familiarity with retrieval techniques (vector databases, embeddings, RAG architectures).
• Prior experience in transforming technical and complex data insights into clear narratives for general non-technical audiences and writing accompanying text that contextualizes data and extracts and distills key insights.
• Background in civic technology, government finance, or public interest data work.
• Familiarity with Git, command line, and modern development workflows.
• Experience leveraging GIS tools (ArcGIS, QGIS) to visualize and analyze spatially referenced data for policy research and program planning

Responsibilities

• Data Pipeline Development & AI Integration
• Design and maintain classification pipelines that process hundreds of budget documents—combining keyword filtering, zero-shot transformer models (BART, DeBERTa), and LLM-powered review for edge cases.
• Work with structured and unstructured data, cleaning and transforming raw budget text into standardized funding stream records.
• Stay current on AI advancements and help build a culture of responsible AI adoption across the organization.
• Data Governance & Quality
• Develop and implement procedures to ensure data accuracy, completeness, and consistency across our fiscal mapping products. This includes identifying data quality issues, resolving them where possible, and enforcing governance standards.
• Work with product teams on process enhancement by introducing automations or workflow improvements.
• Analysis & Collaboration
• Analyze public fiscal data to reveal patterns, trends, and insights for publication.
• Collaborate closely with fiscal mappers, communications, and strategy teams to align project goals to translate technical outputs into actionable information for non-technical audiences.
• Cross-functional collaboration and working closely with federal and state fiscal mappers, communications, and strategy teams to align project goals. Participate in brainstorming sessions and contribute creative ideas for data storytelling

Benefits

• Children’s Funding Project offers a generous benefits package, a great (and growing) team, and a working environment that emphasizes professional development and growth.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level