Watershed is seeking a Staff Data Scientist to design and build the statistical foundations of their core datasets, including CEDA (Scope 3 emissions) and Cornerstone (open data initiative), to address the analytical and methodological challenges of creating reliable, defensible sustainability data for high-stakes decisions.
Requirements
- Have 5+ years of industry experience in data science, applied statistics, or a related quantitative field, with a track record of building data products or analytical systems.
- Have strong foundations in statistics and quantitative reasoningcomfortable with concepts like uncertainty quantification, bias-variance tradeoffs, experimental design, and statistical modeling.
- Are fluent in Python and SQL, with experience building data pipelines that incorporate analytical logic and statistical validation. Experience with data transformation frameworks is a plus.
- Have experience working with messy, real-world data and making principled decisions about how to model, clean, and harmonize it into reliable datasets.
- Care about both analytical rigor and engineering craft: you write well-tested, maintainable code and design solutions that are scientifically defensible and operationally robust.
- Communicate complex analytical concepts clearly to diverse audiences, from climate scientists to product managers to customers.
- Thrive in environments that require both systematic thinking and attention to detailbalancing methodological soundness with the need to move quickly.
Responsibilities
- Design and validate the statistical methodologies underlying our emissions datasets, ensuring they are scientifically sound, transparent, and fit for purpose.
- Build data processing pipelines that incorporate statistical rigorhandling missing data, quantifying uncertainty, and implementing quality control measures that catch anomalies and errors.
- Develop frameworks for evaluating data quality, coverage, and reliability across heterogeneous sources, and communicate these trade-offs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Partner with climate scientists to translate research insights into production data systems, bridging the gap between scientific methodology and scalable engineering.
- Analyze and model sustainability data to uncover patterns, validate assumptions, and surface insights that improve our datasets and inform product development.
- Contribute to open data initiatives and peer-reviewed academic publications, ensuring our methodologies are well-documented, reproducible, and advance industry standards.
- Mentor other data scientists and engineers on statistical best practices and analytical thinking.
Other
- We are looking for team members who love product-building, want to work hard at a mission-oriented startup, and will collaborate with us in shaping the culture of a growing team.
- Must be willing to work from an office 4 days per week (except for remote roles)
- We prioritize transparency and lack of surprise throughout the process.
- At Watershed, we are dedicated to ensuring an inclusive recruitment process.
- Motivated by sustainability challenges and excited to work at the intersection of data science, climate science, and impact.
