Data Scientist I - Curriculum Analytics

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Job Description

The Institutional Analytics and Research (IAR) team supports and enables most university teams, departments, and colleges to make data-informed decisions that lead to better student outcomes. Our analysts, scientists, researchers, and managers are distributed across several teams: Faculty Analytics, Institutional Research, Curriculum Analytics, Outreach Analytics, and Student Success Analytics.

Curriculum Analytics uses WGU's rich data assets to create course-level insights and student recommendations. We design and monitor course performance metrics, support the development of effective courses and programs, and create personalized guidance. Our work reflects a strong sense of purpose and a drive to innovate to help every student succeed.

The Data Scientist transforms large volumes of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data into actionable insights that support decision-making and student success. They collaborate closely with teams across IAR, Program Development, Data Engineering, Decision Intelligence, Product Management, EdTech, and Faculty to understand needs, share findings, and build impactful solutions. Their toolkit includes statistical analysis, machine learning, text mining, and natural language processing, which they apply to create personalized guidance, explore patterns, and develop predictive models that can be integrated into products and workflows.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Documents data and analytics needs in projects of medium/high complexity with a student and equity-centered lens, collaborating with peers, cross-functional partners, faculty staff, and leaders. Translates user stories into technical requirements.
• Sets and manages expectations about analytics tasks and activities through clear, timely, and effective communication with partners and stakeholders.
• Identifies adequate data sources and data sets to evaluate hypotheses and produce forecasts.
• Analyzes large data sets from both structured and unstructured sources and develops statistical and predictive models.
• Collaborates with Data Engineering in the development of ETL/ELT processes and data pipelines.
• Identifies, investigates, and solves complex data issues, contributing to the accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, and validity of the university's data.
• Utilizes software, scripts, and algorithms to perform complex data-related tasks (e.g., importing, cleaning, transforming, analyzing, displaying) without human intervention.
• Combines data analysis, visualization, and narrative structures to convey information in compelling ways that instigate deliberate action.
• Selects and deploys a variety of mathematical models, forecasting methods (e.g., time series, inferential, regression), descriptive statistics, and/or classification algorithms to make predictions and identify relationships based on limited sets of data.
• Conveys information effectively to peers, partners, and senior leaders, using a variety of resources and formats (synchronous and asynchronous, verbal and written) such as e-mails, presentations, meeting, and workshops.
• Creates and organizes information about processes, projects, operations, data assets, and insights from analyses, making it accessible in ways that increase the university's knowledge and efficiency.
• Writes and interprets technical documentation (e.g. Entity-Relationship, Conceptual, Logical, and Physical data models).
• Contributes actively to the enrichment of the university's data management platforms (e.g., data dictionaries, catalogs, etc.).
• Tracks and reports own progress, dependencies, and challenges diligently.
• Designs small-scale solutions and collaborates effectively with other technical specialists (e.g., data engineers) in the construction of data products, systems, and applications.
• Understands and abides by the relevant policies and methods to access, use, transform, store, and delete data in responsible, secure, and compliant ways.
• Works actively in improving own skills and knowledge through internal and external, formal and informal, structured and unstructured learning. Is a lifelong learner and embodies a growth mindset.
• Performs other job-related duties as assigned.

Experience and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with versioning tools in the context of CI/CD (e.g., Github) and deploying models using machine learning operations (MLOps) best practices

Work Location

• This position is in-office in Salt Lake City, UT.

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Position & Application Details

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It's not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.