About Graphika

Graphika empowers the world to understand and navigate the “cybersocial terrain.” We create large-scale, in-depth maps of social media landscapes and conversations to discover how communities form online and how influence and information flow within large scale networks. Our interdisciplinary team uses our unique, patented set of technologies and tools to create and apply new, rigorous analytical methods to answer difficult questions about online conversations.

The Role

Graphika seeks a Research Engineer to join the team. 

Research Engineers work with our Labs and Tech teams to drive continuous innovation and improvement in Graphika's technical offerings through our Research and Development efforts, helping our company and clients reach their science and business objectives. The Research Engineering team epitomizes translational research – collaborating with other Graphika teams to turn basic research into products and technical solutions. Research Engineering projects often involve machine learning and analytics engineering, task automation and scaling, developing and reinforcing research infrastructure, and cross-team collaboration – including work with our Product team and completing grant and patent applications.

The Research Engineering team is formally a part of the Labs team at Graphika, which performs basic and applied research at the cutting edge of computational social science. Labs advances Graphika’s mapping technology to new data types, leverages machine learning and natural language processing to improve analysis of network structures, and analyzes the causal structures of social mechanisms at a large scale. Within Labs, Research Engineering focuses on two key priorities: a) development of fundamental software capabilities to operationalize the outcomes of Labs research studies; and b) robust prototyping of theoretical innovations in this field.

Ideal Candidate Profile

You have a sustained track record of making significant and self-directed contributions to large research and software projects – not just as a data scientist that creates new analytic solutions, but as an engineer and/or software developer who creates products from those solutions. You think beyond just the task at hand to deeply understand the 'why' behind what you are doing, from both a scientific and a client-oriented perspective. You excel at bridging teams and collaborating with colleagues from diverse disciplinary experiences. You are comfortable maneuvering between open-ended research projects and sprint-based software development.

You work with confidence and without ego. Our research engineers are knowledgeable, creative, and exercise a high degree of leadership in their daily work. You hold defensible ideas and advocate for what you believe is right, but you are also adept at identifying and evaluating trade-offs and willing to be proven wrong. You are committed to supporting your fellow teammates.

Areas of Responsibility

• Develop software capabilities and expand analytical/data infrastructure to enable fundamental advances in computational social science and company capabilities
• Translate cutting-edge research code into software solutions
• Help build Graphika’s patent portfolio by inventing and documenting key technologies, algorithms, and designs
• Work in an interdisciplinary team of researchers, analysts, data engineers, and technicians
• Publish and present results to academic and professional communities 
• Contribute to Graphika’s scientific/technical grant applications

Qualifications

Required:

• You have 1-2 years experience working in the crossroads between analysis and development, e.g. as an applied researcher, ML engineer, or technical data scientist
• You have experience working with big data (e.g. tens of millions of records), including parsing and visualization, and analyzing data in cloud environments such as Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud
• You have experience in software development and collaborating on code via Git
• You are familiar with databases and understand how to query data and construct table schemas using SQL
• You have experience developing in distributed or cloud-based systems, e.g. AWS or Google Cloud.
• You have some experience with statistical modeling of complex datasets, such as regression analysis, time-series models, and network analysis
• You are conversant with the Python scientific stack (scipy, numpy, pandas) and can understand logic written in other scientific computing languages (e.g. C++, Julia, Scala, R, Java, etc.)
• You communicate and present your work clearly to a general audience

Nice to have:

• You have experience with one or more of the following computational methods: network analysis, natural language processing, computer vision
• You have a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Science, or related field

• Please note:

  Research Engineers play a significant role in software development at Graphika. Given this responsibility, applicants should be comfortable turning prototype code into scalable software products on a distributed machine infrastructure (e.g., over AWS cloud architecture) that integrates with our internal data pipelines.

Education Requirements:

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience, preferably with a quantitative major

Benefits

• Unlimited PTO, with a company-mandated minimum of ten days of vacation time taken per year.
• 100% healthcare (health, vision, dental) premium coverage for employees; 50% premium coverage for families
• For NYers, access to "Graphikafé," our NYC small office setup with bookable hotdesks, meeting rooms, and phone booths
• Remote personal office setup stipend + 20% of home internet costs covered

An important note about joining Graphika during this extraordinary time:

Graphika is growing! Despite the downturn and accompanying reductions in other sectors and companies, Graphika is retaining current employees and is actively hiring for full time positions. 

On March 12, 2020, Graphika moved to a fully-distributed model, and we've been working together as a company to respond to the changing realities of the AfterTimes. As a result, we are happy to consider applicants who are located in the continental US, with the caveat that the Labs Team works on Eastern time and begins their day at around 9am.