R sig jobs - Apr 2012 - Data Scientist and 'Data Management Guru' positions available in the heart of Austin, Texas

== About Us:



Oceanus is a boutique software and analytics company.  We address some of
the most difficult and strategic issues in the automotive industry such as
how to launch electric vehicles, and how social media will change car
ownership.  We are profitable, doubling each year, compensate well, and
have great benefits -- including beer on tap.



Our culture is important to us.  We make decisions on three simple values:



== Brand:  Make our customers, employees and partners love us.  We bring
start-up enthusiasm, speed, and innovation to the enterprise.  We solve
hard problems, we are agile, we keep it simple, and we over-deliver.

Growth:  Doubling each year is hard, but interesting--we have to completely
change the problems we are tackling and how we approach them.  Growth is
the challenge that excites us to come into work and allows us to hire and
retain the best people.

Fun.  Life is too short to hate your job.  We have the luxury of picking
what we work on, and we choose what motivates us.  Work will sometimes be
work, but we try to minimize suck.  We have a relaxed, collaborative
environment.  We celebrate our successes, and sometimes, we just celebrate.

Responsibilities:







== Data Management Guru Responsibilities:

Our business is built on understanding our customers' data more deeply than
they do.  We have a broad range of web, behavioral, descriptive, financial,
and operational data on consumers, companies, and dealers in the automotive
industry.  Nearly every Oceanus project involves integrating heterogeneous,
unstructured data, making sense of it with little help, mining it for
insights, and applying it in novel ways to solve business problems.



As our business doubles every year, the complexity of our data warehouse
grows even faster.



We need you to make data management an ever-greater differentiator for
Oceanus by:

Maintaining our dozens of data sources and import schedules and processes
to deliver 100% reliability and integrity, even in the face of poor-quality
source data

Applying innovation, intelligence, and heuristic approaches to our ETL
rather than standard, fixed brute-force rules

Continuously enhancing our technology platform and toolsets as new problems
arise: building and buying when appropriate

Becoming a subject matter expert in the data itself, to apply better
semantic checks and structure the data more intelligently than anyone else
could

Building an agile version management and production release process for data

Ensuring our data warehouse scales appropriately as our data sets grow

Working with our customers to help them develop more agile internal data
management processes

We use a range of tools and technologies: SQL Server, Oracle, bash, Perl,
Python, SQL, Informatica, etc. We are looking for someone who has a deep
understanding of ETL concepts but is not just a DBA or ETL developer, who
is not wedded to any particular toolkit, and who is comfortable with
programming, algorithmic thinking, automated testing, and pushing the
envelope on agile database development and process automation.  This
position is perfect for a data junkie with a development bent.



== Data Management Guru Requirements:

Bachelor's degree in CS, or equivalent experience.

At least 2 years of work history managing complex data sets with novel,
fault-tolerant approaches.  (Significantly more compensation is available
for those with deeper experience.)

Track record of success in using diverse technologies and approaches to
manage data in an extremely dynamic environment.

Comfort with and commitment to being our technology lead in a critical area
of our business.













== Data Scientist Responsibilities:

Our Data Scientists do everything from data prep to data mining and
statistical analysis to business presentation.  They are pivotal to our
projects from start to finish, developing the entire path from business
problem statement to data-driven solution recommendation.  Data scientists
need to be good at both asking the right questions and finding creative,
technically rigorous answers.



Oceanus Data scientists work with detailed data that describes the inner
workings of the automotive industry: consumer web-browsing and purchase
information, customer demographics and psychographics, vehicle production
and delivery specs and schedules, vehicle sales performance and history,
incentives, repair information, dealership operations, etc.  They dream up
and answer big questions: What makes some dealerships more successful than
others?  How much sales lift comes from incentives?  What kind of marketing
is effective?  What mix of product packages and features should be
manufactured?  How many will sell?  Who is likely to buy an electric car?



We don't specialize in particular algorithms or modeling approaches -- we
are always learning and looking for the best approach to the problem at
hand.  The best candidates will have both exceptional technical/statistical
skills and strong business acumen, and be interested in fast-paced work and
varied responsibilities.  They will be knowledgeable and capable enough to
find a way to leverage data to answer nearly any automotive business
question, choosing their own analytical approaches and owning project
results.  (Though there is an opportunity to transition less complex work
to offshore teams.)  They'll be excited to present results that could
change the way businesses operate, and able to present those simply and
clearly, in terms that businesspeople understand.



== Data Scientist Requirements:



Graduate degree or equivalent in CS, statistics, econometrics, operations
research, math, or a related field.

Deep knowledge of at least one statistical analysis tool (preferably R or
SPSS) and Microsoft Office for presentation.

At least 2 years of work history in data analysis, with a track record of
successful application of diverse analytical approaches (including but not
limited to regression modeling, time series analysis, and decision trees.)

Programming skills, including ability for sophisticated automated data prep
through SQL and at least one other language, and ability to build reusable
analytical tools from scratch.

Ability and drive to work quickly and deliver new insights and incremental
results on a daily basis.







For a good example of the pragmatic work style and approach to problem
solving that we value, see Jeremy Howard?s video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwt6XEh7U3g

For more information or next steps, see the posting at
http://oceanus.jobscore.com/list or reach out to me directly.







Best,

Mark

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