Senior Data Scientist, Data Analytics & Reporting (N380)

Salary Range: $9,333.00 - $12,576.46 monthly

SUMMARY

The Los Angeles County Department of Homeless Services and Housing (HSH)consolidates our countywide response to homelessness. The driving force behind HSH is increasing accountability and transparency, improving care for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, and streamlining collaboration with partners including services providers, the County's 88 cities, and unincorporated areas to deliver high-quality, life-saving care. Staff schedules are based on business need and may include the option of a hybrid work schedule where employees work remotely and from the office.

The Program Analytics team carries out mission-critical data science and analytics projects in support of programs that provide housing and social services to the most vulnerable people in Los Angeles County. This role offers an opportunity for impact across program areas spanning the Los Angeles County homelessness system, including but not limited to outreach and response to unsheltered people, interim housing and temporary shelters, permanent supportive housing and case management services that sustain people in housing, and benefits entitlement programs.

This position supports the Associate Director of Program Analytics in building data science products that help those program teams make better decisions, including by building dashboards, predictive models, and supporting internal program evaluation. The role also includes helping to build out metrics for systemwide performance improvement, including building and maintaining indicators that track the performance of the homelessness system and of individual service providers within that system, to ensure taxpayer dollars are having the maximum possible impact on housing and supporting people experiencing homelessness.

The Senior Data Scientist works closely with a team of data analysts and data scientists, providing supervision as needed. Those analysts are tasked with providing critical analytical and reporting support to HSH programs, ensuring data-driven insights inform decision-making and enhance program effectiveness. Key responsibilities include supervising the development and automation of reports and dashboards, improving the quality and accessibility of program data, and ensuring analytics and reporting efforts are aligned with strategic priorities. The role ensures that analytics and reporting efforts align with strategic priorities, enhances the quality and accessibility of program data, and fosters cross-team collaboration to meet organizational goals.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Oversees recurring reporting workflows and leads the automation of these processes, including revisions to improve data quality and accuracy and increase analytic value.
• Supports the Associate Director of Program Analytics in delivering mission-critical data science projects across the Los Angeles County homelessness system.
• Collaborates with division, departmental, and countywide stakeholders to solicit, define, and manage highly complex data science projects from conception through implementation; ensures that projects result in actionable insights and recommendations that can be used to support business decisions and allocate resources; and provides ongoing consultation during program implementation of recommendations as necessary to ensure program fidelity.
• Provides technical oversight to small teams of Data Scientists and Data Analysts as necessary to ensure project success.
• Leads the discovery process with departmental stakeholders to document business requirements and frame business problems so that appropriate corresponding data science techniques and products can be identified and deployed.
• Collaborates with other department subject matter experts to understand, identify, and select available and relevant sources of data for use cases, including internal, external, structured, and unstructured data sources; and provides guidance to other department data experts in the selection and transformation of such sources.
• Supports collection, integration, and retention requirements for large sets of structured and unstructured data from disparate sources, acts as a resource for senior data engineers and architects in the selection and design of systems for use by the data science team.
• Reviews proposals by Data Scientists and analysts regarding selection and improvement of data science tools and ensures that the team's tools and systems are well documented.
• Conducts and coordinates statistical inference of data and conveys findings and conclusions orally, in writing, visually, in presentations, and by developing interactive tools as appropriate to communicate effectively with a wide range of audiences, including technical and nontechnical staff, stakeholders, and members of the public.
• Works with program staff to understand the implications of analyses and to ensure that findings are actionable and support data-driven program