Senior Researcher

We are ExploreLearning®, a Cambium Learning® Group company.

At ExploreLearning, we believe all students can have success in math and science — and have fun along the way! We’re an innovative ed tech company, helping students to embrace their inner scientist and/or mathematician through adaptive, game-based instruction, all while increasing deeper learning of foundational STEM concepts in a way that is as fun as it is effective. Our products and services help teachers easily personalize and enliven instruction, while building the skills and confidence students need to succeed in these critical subject areas.

We’re looking for individuals who share our commitment to solutions that truly make a difference in the lives of students.

Job Overview:

Join one of the most dynamic Research & Analytics teams in EdTech! Apply your data science skills to our mission: Delivering the highest quality science and math educational technology experiences to millions of students and educators. Our Research & Analytics team is looking for a data scientist to work as a Senior Analyst to inform product direction and determine product efficacy. This is a team that seeks empirical answers to crucial questions such as: are all students succeeding? under what conditions? what improvements should we make to our products and services to optimize student success? 

As Senior Researcher, you will work with a collaborative and impact-oriented team of product researchers, together responsible for planning and executing projects that both inform how we design our products and generate evidence about the efficacy of those products. We capture mountains of data points about the experiences of our learners and educators every day. In this role, it will be your responsibility to work closely with a variety of teams to understand their questions and needs, and then work up tools and techniques to turn this disparate data into insights that facilitate great decisions and evidence of how effective we are at achieving our target outcomes for students.Job 

Responsibilities:

You will be responsible for the end-to-end design and delivery of a broad range of quantitative (and sometimes qualitative) analyses and data projects. Typical responsibilities include:

• Lead the design, planning, and execution of research projects that inform program development and improvement.
• Lead the design, planning, and execution of research projects that reveal the extent of our products’ impact on student outcomes (oftentimes working with independent third party analysts).
• Own relationships with internal teams to understand their goals and collaboratively scope research/data support to meet their needs and maximize impact.
• Build analytical datasets and innovative data pipelines from large relational, longitudinal, databases.
• Apply exploratory, correlational, and causal inference data analysis techniques to answer complex questions about our users and business.
• Design user-centered data tools that enable our learning designers, customer success managers, and others to make decisions and act.
• Present findings, make recommendations, and facilitate data interpretation with stakeholders at various levels of the organization.
• Organize and maintain technical documentation, including business rules and code, ensuring version control and replicability.
• Collaborate with a cross-functional team of analysts, engineers, and product managers to build a high-quality data infrastructure across the business.

Job Requirements:

• Successful candidates will demonstrate excellent analytical skills, a track record of innovation and achievement, and strong communication, visualization, and presentation skills
• 3-5+ years of applied experience in data science, analytics, or research role
• Bachelor’s degree in a social science or related field; Master’s degree strongly preferred
• Knowledge of experimental, and research design principles and experience with applied statistics/data analysis
• Expertise in a statistical programming languages (R, Python, SPSS,, etc.)
• Hands-on experience working with and performing analyses on large, real-world data sets
• Ability to translate complex information into easy-to-understand data visualizations, insightful summaries, and data tools
• Exemplary project management, attention to detail, and problem-solving skills
• Experience driving self-directed projects
• Excellent communication and writing skills for both technical and non-technical audiences

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience doing experimental design and data analysis in the context of education or learning sciences and/or in EdTech
• Experience working closely with cross-functional product and/or customer success teams
• Experience working with independent research firms
• Expertise working with relational databases and knowledge of SQL
• Experience with using a Business Intelligence tool to design visualizations and self-service analytics tools
• Interest in learning analytics, educational data mining, and/or evidence-centered design

Why Work With Us?

In addition to competitive salaries and generous benefits, ExploreLearning offers an exciting and dynamic working environment in which creativity, teamwork and professional growth are valued and rewarded. Our award-winning online programs bring engaging and effective instructional strategies to K-12 classrooms around the world. Over the course of the last 20+ years, we’ve received numerous awards from some of the worlds most respected education organizations, and were recently named one of the Best Places to Work in Virginia.

Our office is based in historic downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, located approximately 100 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., and consistently rated one of America’s best places to live. The area offers a wide variety of business, cultural, historical, educational and sport-related attractions.

To learn more about our organization and the exciting work we do, visit us online.

An Equal Opportunity Employer

We are dedicated to fostering a culture that celebrates unique backgrounds, ideas, and experiences. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, national origin, protected veteran status, or disability.