Data Scientist

Company: Unfold
Location: Davis
Posted on: January 12, 2022

Job Description:

At Unfold, we are specifically focused on the vertical farming industry and its unique growing requirements. Putting taste, color, texture, flavor, nutrition (and more) is at the center of our seed development. Together, we are seekers and explorers on the roads of reimagination. Unfold welcomes others who love feeding their curiosity as much as they thrive on feeding the world. Join us in pushing the boundaries of what's possible tomorrow by working hard on what can be done today - with hope.

The Data Scientist position offers a unique opportunity for an individual to develop the process of transforming data into insights and analytics, including experimental design, analyses, and reporting for Unfold's state-of-the-art, high-tech vertical farm (VF) R&D set-up. This individual will play a key role in delivering innovative scientific advances by applying predictive analytics, machine learning, and statistics to draw biological inferences to calculate the product performance and provide comprehensive insights for our growing R&D team. This position is full-time exempt and reports to the VP of Genetics; the position will be based in Sacramento/Davis, CA or San Francisco, CA; special consideration for remote work may be considered for candidates with prior, proven experience delivering success in a virtual role. This role is highly collaborative and requires a demonstrated ability to coordinate projects with cross-functional teams and independently design, execute, and critically analyze data-centered experiments to meet project goals. This individual will be an integral part of the genetics team and will contribute directly to developing crop varieties and digital solutions targeted for vertical farming and Unfold's customers.

Major Responsibilities

• Work with genetics, plant performance, and digital team(s) to develop novel analytical models and best practices for complex data analyses to drive optimization and improvement of product development, marketing techniques, and business strategies
• Assume the role of 'Data Champion' for the Genetics team by taking full ownership of fostering an intentional approach to cross-functional collaborative efforts around internal data resources, making Unfold's data repositories approachable, understandable, and accessible across all levels of the organization
• Execute data-driven solutions built from ideation and hypothesis generation, data extraction and exploration, model building and validation, collaborative review, and productization
• Develop and drive statistical methods and computational modeling to foster the successful completion of breeding and digital initiatives in preparation for commercialization
• Understand data needs and construct data pipelines that address gaps and provide new information about plant performance and refine standard operating procedures
• Perform exploratory data analysis to assemble metrics to assess productivity across the Unfold platform and support cross-functional teams by delivering analyses and recommending process improvements to help the business continue to scale and streamline business operations
• Work closely with the digital team on data integrations and model deployments to implement models and monitor outcomes
• Establish strong rapport with colleagues across the technical and business spectrum of Unfold
• Self-motivation for exploration and out-of-the-box thinking is critical
  
  Required Qualifications
  
  • A PhD in genetics, computer science, data science, statistics, or related discipline, or a MS with a minimum of 5 years of relevant industry experience, ideally in the food & ag sector
  • Experience with agricultural experimental design & data analysis
  • Experience working with balanced and imbalanced data sets and appropriate experimental designs to address the challenges of each
  • Strong working knowledge and direct experience with the following: SQL, Python, R and/or R Studio, Looker, Git and/or GitHub and the like, familiarity with GCP and AWS are helpful.
  • Comfort and direct experience working across digital, biological, and commercial teams, delivering analytics outcomes that meet needs across the different segments of the organization
  • Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with technical and non-technical cross-functional teams
  • Willingness and ability to work effectively in a virtual, distributed work environment, as well as participation as warranted in an office or lab setting
  • Strong project management skills with prior hands-on project management experience and past participation in Agile development workflows
  • Possess a strong work ethic, self-motivation, and spirit of creativity & innovation
  • Ability and willingness to travel (international and domestic) as necessary to support Unfold
    
    Desired Qualifications
    • Experience with one or more of the following:
      • Genomic data analysis
      • Machine learning, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and their application to biological or plant science data analysis
      • Utilizing image-based data to develop, test, and/or validate biological concepts
      • Direct experience working in a start-up environment, or a mature appreciation for the opportunities and challenges arising in such an environment

Keywords: Unfold, Davis , Data Scientist, Other , Davis, California