Computational Consulting Lead

As the Computational Computing Lead, you will lead a team of Computational Research Consultants that accelerates and facilitates ambitious academic research at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. The Computational Consulting team sits within a dedicated Research Support team at Kellogg. Clients include Kellogg faculty members and doctoral students with a broad spectrum of academic backgrounds, research interests, and technical backgrounds. Consultants typically engage multiple clients at a time, and these engagements may last from a few days to several weeks. As the team leader, you will also consult with clients and manage some projects in addition to providing supervisory and thought leadership to the team.

Our clients ask the Computational Consulting team to solve challenging problems with data collection, scientific computing, text manipulation, large scale data analysis, and process acceleration. For example, the team might write code to automate the collection of research data, create structured datasets from unstructured sources, implement machine learning algorithms, or prototype cloud-based “Big Data” to accelerate analysis of very large datasets. Your team will also play an important role in helping Kellogg meet challenges related to research replicability and Open Science.

As the team lead, you will guide the strategic evolution of the research computing environment at Kellogg and the services your team provides. You will set high standards for service and help your team to meet them. You will anticipate emerging needs in the computational social sciences and proactively develop practical plans to address them. You will also build and maintain healthy working relationships with our technology partners.

Expect to work with bright minds on challenging problems, continually evaluate emerging technologies, and apply new techniques to solve research problems. As these technologies and research questions evolve, so will your role and the roles of your team.

Specific Responsibilities:

• Provide guidance, management, and supervision to a team of 3-5 Computational Research Consultants or similar roles, while setting expectations and delivering regular feedback to deliver high-quality support.
• Provide computational support services to researchers as appropriate.

• Identify and prioritize computational initiatives that expand capabilities for research at Kellogg.
• Identify trends and opportunities for the team to provide new or improved types of support for researchers.
• Continue professional development in areas necessary to perform duties related to the job, such as leadership, strategy, data management, and data science.

• Lead outreach efforts with new faculty to promote mutual understanding of their support needs and the team’s support capabilities.
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with partners in IT organizations to deliver high performance computing infrastructure on an ongoing basis. 
• Oversee the creation and delivery of documentation, guides, and training materials which help faculty, students, and staff to develop the data and computational skills needed to perform research.
• Lead workshops and training sessions to share advanced computational techniques and best practices with the research community.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Advanced degree (M.A. or M.S. minimum, Ph.D preferred) with a research component in any quantitative field.
• Prior experience in a supervisory role, successfully organizing team efforts, delegating tasks, and managing toward successful group outcomes.
• At least 7 years’ experience in working in data science, data management, data analysis, and/or software development roles.
• Familiarity with research data lifecycle, grant or publication requirements for data, information security levels, and common analytic techniques in the computational social sciences.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills to communicate with faculty, students, colleagues, and leaders.
• Commitment to continual learning and development.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with principles of Open Science
• Prior experience with automating data management and transformation tasks, version control, and unit testing.