A Little Bit About Us

Balto was founded to redefine how humans and machines work together to optimize human communication, and we're just scratching the surface. If you're excited by the opportunity to join a dynamic team initiating a technological revolution in Real-Time Guidance, Balto is for you.

More than just a company, Balto is a community, a community committed to empowering each of our members and serving our community. This mission is at the heart of our organization. We're looking for someone who shares this vision to collaborate with product, engineering, and data science team members to identify and solve some of the most important problems at Balto.

Balto's Real-Time Guidance understands phone conversations and tells people what to say, live in their conversations. In 2018, Balto guided less than a million conversations; today, Balto has guided over fifty-million conversations (we celebrated with cake). By the end of the year, Balto will guide over 200M conversations. 

Real-time Guidance is a brand new product category, and Balto is leading the pack. We're making sure that humans understand each other - the opportunities are endless.

Balto's customers, including name-brand retailers and Fortune 500s, use Balto's real-time guidance technology to scale "perfect" to thousands of sales and service agents with the push of a button and get immediate insight into what's working on their phone calls and what's not. 

But enough about us, let's talk about you!

Here’s What a Data Scientist Does

“A data scientist is someone who can obtain, scrub, explore, model, and interpret data, blending hacking, statistics, and machine learning. Data scientists not only are adept at working with data, but appreciate data itself as a first-class product.”

-- Hillary Mason 

As a Data Scientist at Balto, you will lead projects that improve the product, provide internal reporting tools, and conduct external-facing statistical analyses. Additionally, Managing the entire data science project lifecycle, from idea generation and proof of concept to deployment and maintenance, will fall under the umbrella of your groundbreaking and crucial responsibilities. 

What does it take to fulfill this crucial role? 

Balto is looking for a Data Scientist to work as part of a growing data science team. The data science team at Balto performs custom statistical analyses for customers, develops internal reporting tools, and creates models and processes that improve our customer-facing products. The tools we employ range from statistical models that support causal inference to cutting-edge machine learning algorithms for NLP. The environment is highly collaborative, both within the data science team and the entire organization.

The Data Scientist is expected to take ownership of significant projects within the team. These projects will include various database and ETL development tasks, statistical modeling, machine learning, and reporting to internal and external stakeholders. You will work closely with key stakeholders to develop ideas, build proofs of concept, and scale prototypes to production. As part of a small team, you will be required to operate across multiple domains, apply a wide variety of data science-related tools, and learn new skills and technologies when needed. 

What kinds of responsibilities might you take on? 

• Develop, train, tune, and evaluate machine learning models using common ML frameworks (e.g., scikit-learn, Tensorflow, Keras) and deploy these models in a production environment.
• Build reliable and maintainable ETL processes that support automated reporting.
• Design, build and maintain reporting tools, including dashboards and automated reports.
• Leverage cloud resources (e.g., AWS RDS and EC2) that support model training and automated reporting.

Skills & Requirements

• 4-year degree in data science, statistics, mathematics, or computer science or advanced degree in a quantitative field
• 1-5 years of experience
• Python and SQL
• Linux and MacOS
• Statistical and machine learning methods for prediction
• GitHub and git within collaborative teams
• Cloud resources, especially compute, databases, and storage

Bonus if familiar with 

• Natural language processing
• Software development
• Database design and management
• ETL pipeline design and deployment
• R, R shiny, R markdown
• Django or similar web app frameworks
• Postgres
• AWS

We have plenty of benefits. Baltonians rave about these the most.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance to make quality healthcare affordable.
• Life insurance to protect your loved ones in the worst-case scenario.
• 401k to save for your retirement. 
• Paid vacation and holidays, including five days of Civic Engagement PTO, to give you the flexibility to make relaxation, family, and community priorities.
• Generous stock options, so you can be a meaningful owner of the company as it grows.
• A quarterly professional development of stipend of $1,000 to inspire continuous professional growth. You can use it for nearly anything that makes you a better version of yourself - from chess lessons to college courses (this one is definitely a crowd-favorite).

Balto’s Values

Start with gratitude: Stay humble, recognize others, and make the most of everything.

Always be growing: Never stop learning. Be a force of growth for yourself and others. 

Leadership is Ownership: See the problem. Do the solution. Own the result.

Balto’s People

We have all kinds of people, including musicians, chefs, painters, gear heads, gardeners, philosophers, gamers, movie buffs, woodworkers, and polo players. And at least one aspiring hockey player...we’ll see.

You can read more about their experiences here and here.

Baltonians say things like:

• “Coming together as a team to build something innovative and unique” 
• “Contagious energy that keeps me motivated all day”
• “I L-O-V-E it at Balto since day one! They know how to have fun while getting the work done.”

You can read more about their experiences here and here.

Is Balto named after that Cartoon Dog?

Well, kind of - that cartoon dog was named after a real dog. Balto successfully guided his pack through a harrowing journey across Nome, Alaska, in 1925 to deliver medicine to the ice-locked town. We liked the metaphor: our technology guides people to be successful throughout their conversations, scouting ahead and providing helpful support. Like in 1925, a human is still in charge, but humans (and dogs) are always better off with a companion. 

Fun Fact - After his journey, Balto was recognized as a hero with a commemorative statue in Central Park. We’ve visited, and he looked like this.

P.S.

Please share the role with your friends. Don’t worry, you won’t compete for the position; we’re happy to hire two (or more) candidates. The door is always open for great people. 

Balto is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any applicant based on race, color, religion, creed, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual preference, age, and veteran or disability status.