Lead Data Scientist (AI/ML)
What you'd do
WHAT IS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY? A description of the business units can be found at: https://www.jobs.irs.gov/about/who/business-divisions Position(s) are to be filled in following area(s): Information Technology. Consider each location carefully when applying. If you are selected for a location, that location will become your official post of duty. REVIEW THE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BELOW FOR FURTHER DETAILS
Major duties
The following are the duties of this position at the full working level. If this vacancy includes more than one grade and you are selected at a lower grade level, you will have the opportunity to learn to perform these duties and receive training to help you grow in this position. Serves as a Senior Data Scientist by leading advanced analytics projects, defining objectives, coordinating deliverables, evaluating team performance, and resolving challenges to ensure project success. Manages day to-day team operations, and driven outcomes aligned with the organization's goals. Responsibilities include obtaining approvals on project documentation, conducting code and model reviews, and ensuring project delivery acceptance. Communicates findings effectively, providing insights and training on complex analytics solutions to business partners at all levels. Collaborates with senior leaders, technical teams, and non-technical staff to address policy interpretations and translate technical challenges into actionable solutions. Champions IT's digital transformation with a focus on customer-centric, data-driven initiatives, ensuring the analytics environment evolves to meet business needs. Leads efforts to certify datasets, optimize processes for data extraction, transformation, governance, and cataloguing, and accelerate time-to-insights for business decision-making. Applies advanced knowledge of computer science, mathematics, and statistical theories to construct new analytical processes, interpret models, and report quantitative trends and relationships. Leads digital data and analysis efforts to enhance customer strategies, support platform development, and improve user experiences throughout the customer lifecycle. Ensures reports, analyses, visualizations, and dashboards accurately reflect critical information for digital services. Participates in defining project objectives for advanced analytics, supervised and unsupervised machine learning (ML), and AI solutions. Collaborates with business units to gather requirements, establish metrics, and outline expected outcomes. Develops innovative approaches and methodologies, applying advanced operations research and data science techniques such as statistical analysis, forecasting, predictive modeling, prescriptive analysis, and optimization. Validates methodologies and outcomes to ensure accuracy and alignment with objectives. Identifies and implements methods, processes, algorithms, tools, and systems to extract insights from structured and unstructured data sets across the data science lifecycle. Responsible for developing algorithms and tools for data manipulation and processing and using data visualization techniques to clearly articulate findings for stakeholders.
What you need to qualify
Federal experience is not required. Experience may have been gained in the public sector, private sector or through Volunteer Service. One year of experience refers to full-time work; part-timework is considered on a prorated basis. To ensure full credit for your work experience, please indicate dates of employment by month/day/year, and indicate number of hours worked per week, on your resume. You must meet the following requirements by the closing date of this announcement. QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS: To qualify for this position, you must meet the qualification requirements outlined below: BASIC REQUIREMENTS All GRADES: Applicants must have Information Technology related experience demonstrating each of the following four competencies: 1) Attention to Detail, 2) Customer Service, 3) Oral Communication, and 4) Problem Solving. Minimum requirements for Grade 12 and up (GS or Equivalent) Applicants must have Information Technology related experience demonstrating each of the following nine competencies: 1) Attention to Detail, 2) Customer Service, 3) Decision Making, 4) Information Management, 5) Interpersonal Skills, 6) Oral Communication, 7) Problem Solving, 8)Team Work and 9) Technical Competence. EDUCATION: A degree in mathematics, statistics, computer science, data science, or field directly related to the position. The degree must be in a major field of study (at least at the baccalaureate level) that is appropriate for the position. OR COMBINATION OF EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE: A combination of education and experience that includes courses equivalent to a major field of study (30 semester hours) as shown in the paragraph above, plus additional education or appropriate experience. AND SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE GRADE 14: In addition to the basic requirements, you must have one (1) year of specialized experience at a level of difficulty and responsibility equivalent to the GS-13 grade level in the Federal service. Specialized experience for this position includes: Experience designing, developing, deploying, and supporting Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Generative AI, and advanced analytics solutions in production environments. Experience applying statistical analysis, hypothesis testing, experimental design, predictive modeling, model evaluation, and data science techniques to solve business problems and support data-driven decision making. Experience developing, validating, deploying, monitoring, and continuously improving machine learning and AI models, including model performance evaluation, explainability, governance, and responsible AI practices. Experience working with large-scale structured and unstructured data using cloud platforms, distributed computing environments, and big data technologies such as Databricks, Apache Spark, Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or similar technologies. Experience designing and optimizing Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Model (LLM), prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), intent classification, and conversational AI solutions. Experience integrating AI, analytics, and enterprise applications, APIs, databases, cloud services, authentication systems, and knowledge management solutions. Experience developing and maintaining data pipelines, data processing frameworks, and cloud-based analytics solutions to support AI model development, operational reporting, and business intelligence initiatives. Experience analyzing customer interactions, operational data, performance metrics, and user behavior to identify trends, improve AI effectiveness, enhance customer experience, and optimize business operations. Experience applying data governance, data quality, privacy, security, compliance, and responsible AI principles throughout the data and analytics lifecycle. Experience using programming languages such as Python, Java, SQL, Scala, or similar technologies to develop applications, automation solutions, data pipelines, APIs, and AI-enabled services. Experience applying DevSecOps, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, version control, and agile development practices to support reliable and secure deployment of AI and analytics solutions. Experience developing dashboards, reports, data visualizations, and performance metrics that communicate analytical findings and support executive and operational decision making. Experience translating business, program, and operational requirements into technical solutions and actionable recommendations while collaborating with stakeholders, engineers, data scientists, architects, cybersecurity teams, and leadership. AND You must also meet the following requirement(s): PERFORMANCE RATING: Current federal employees must have at least a fully successful or equivalent performance rating to receive consideration. TIME AFTER COMPETITIVE APPOINTMENT (TACA): By the closing date (or if this is an open continuous announcement, by the cut-off date) specified in this job announcement, current civilian employees must have completed at least 90 days of federal civilian service since their latest non-temporary appointment from a competitive referral certificate, known as time after competitive appointment. For this requirement, a competitive appointment is one where you applied to and were appointed from an announcement open to "All US Citizens" TIME IN GRADE (TIG): Federal employees must meet time-in-grade requirements. For positions above the GS-05, applicants must meet applicable time-in-grade requirements to be considered eligible. One year (52 weeks) at the next lower grade level is required to meet the time-in-grade requirements for the grade you are applying for. For positions at the GS-05, you cannot advance to the GS-05 if you have held a GS-02 in the past 52 weeks. There is no TIG restriction for GS-02, 03, or 04 positions. For more information on qualifications please refer to OPM's Qualifications Standards.
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