Data Scientist I

Data Scientist I

Location: Chicago, IL 

Office: 3 days/week in South Loop office

Reports to: Tavern Labs Director of Modeling

Salary Range: $95,500-$113,500 + Equity

About Tavern Research

Tavern Research is a political tech startup that builds tools and insights to help our customers win elections and make better decisions. We specialize in scaling expert human work, like content generation and survey research. We're a venture-backed, mission driven, fast-moving, mostly technical team focused on supporting winning campaigns. Everything else is on our website. If you still have questions, let us know when you apply!

• Work hands-on with real-world, unstructured data: cleaning, debugging, and engineering features that support effective models.
• Support the design and execution of numerical experiments by handling data prep, fitting models, and running standard analyses.
• Contribute to feature engineering and basic model building under the guidance of senior modelers.
• Write clean, well-documented Python code using standard data science libraries.
• Assist with model evaluation, diagnostics, and performance monitoring.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers to scope and execute tightly defined tasks.
• Learn and apply best practices and emerging tools in machine learning, AI, and causal inference.

• This role is designed for early-career candidates with 0–3 years of relevant experience who are eager to grow into more advanced modeling responsibilities.
• Strong academic or applied background in data science and software engineering or  closely related fields.
• Experience building statistical models (beyond differential equations or simulations).
• Demonstrated experience working with messy, real-world datasets.
• Proficiency in Python and standard data science libraries.
• Familiarity with AI and machine learning concepts like embeddings, supervised and unsupervised ML methods, and agentic systems.
• Clear understanding of the data science concepts behind work you’ve done (not just “I ran the code”).
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindsetHumility, patience, and attention to detail.
• Bonus: exposure to model deployment, large language models, or causal inference.

• Premium health insurance
• Unlimited PTO
• Office closed for all federal holidays
• 401k match
• Equity

• Tavern Research is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.