Senior/Staff Data Scientist (ACF)

The posting, as Skylight wrote it

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services.

We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today’s digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists.

The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, data scientists organize, synthesize, visualize, and analyze data to help government stakeholders and product teams make informed decisions. They apply a variety of analytical models to find meaningful insights in both structured and unstructured data, and they communicate these insights in an easily digestible format.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is expanding surge support and capacity for its new Data Capacity and Digital Services organization within the Office of Administration, through the option year of our Task Order 1 contract. The team works with enterprise-serving organizations like ACF Tech and the Office of Grants Management to help programs deliver on ACF’s mission, including priorities focused on reducing grantee burden; reducing waste, fraud, and abuse; and modernizing legacy systems.

You’ll help answer hard questions with data. This role also flexes into lightweight engineering: when a problem calls for a small tool or automation built with AI, DataBricks, or Power Apps rather than a model, you build it.

What to know going in

This work calls for a consultant’s skill set: you’ll interface directly with senior leaders, and much of the work isn’t scoped in advance. This isn’t a team where you take tickets off the top of a backlog. Alongside delivery, we do a lot of technical consulting and capacity building, so people who take initiative and are comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity tend to do best here.

While the scope of this role is likely to evolve over time, the majority of this work may not focus directly on predictive analytics or statistical analysis. Rather, the majority of your work would be focused on data ingestion, data storage and processing, and data visualization.

What you’ll do

• Engage executive and program stakeholders to frame the right questions, then take the initiative to go find the answers, even when the ask is ambiguous or the audience is tough
• Organize data and build data pipelines, using tools like Palantir Foundry and PowerBI
• Build AI agents, integrating them into workflows, validating outputs
• Visualize grant and program data using Tableau and PowerBI
• Analyze large amounts of structured and unstructured information, including grants and program data, to discover trends and patterns
• Build lightweight tools, prototypes, and automations with platforms like Credal and Power Apps when a quick solution beats a long one
• Propose solutions and strategies for business challeng

[…]
D&D insurance

• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
• Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays
• Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents
• Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options
• Business development / sales bonuses
• Referral bonuses
• Annual $2000 allowance for professional development
• Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases
• Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)
• Flexible, remote-friendly work environment
• An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good

Interview tips

Our process includes a preliminary screen, a skills interview, a behavioral interview, and a reverse interview where you meet your potential team — usually four conversations across two to three weeks. Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview:

• Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works.
• Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them.
• Browse our case studies to learn more about our work.

If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at recruiting@skylight.digital .

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.