Senior Social Scientist
About Team Go
We started on this mission by putting together a team of people to fix social isolation and bring people together to do things they love. By looking at how people make plans with one another, we built the Go app around peoples' existing behaviors, like sharing plans with our friends, inviting friends to collaborate, finding time to hang out--and making it all happen in real time, in real life.
We use technology to inspire and empower humanity, and to enrich real-life relationships with friends, family, and community because we believe in a world where social technology unites us and makes us happier.
We also want the local businesses in your community to be part of the conversation, which supercharges the Go app and helps you find what you love to do and do it with the people you already know.
Go represents a new paradigm in social: no harvesting user data, a fully transparent revenue model, and a social technology company whose north star is Patagonia, not Palantir.
We also represent a new paradigm in what is possible at an engineering and data science-heavy technology company. Roughly half of our company is female, LGBTQ, and/or PoC. Our diversity is our greatest superpower and part of our cultural bedrock.
No smart jerks, please:). We're a team of equals who welcome spirited debate in the hopes of building something bigger and better than the sum of our parts.
The Role
This position is all about subtle nuances. A successful Senior Social Scientist, specializing in Activities Ontology, is a person who loves why, when, how, and what we do in our social lives. The right candidate will have the right combination of inventiveness, managerial skills, and technical know-how.
The Senior Ontology Social Scientist will have a deep understanding of cultural anthropology, ethnography, sociology, and linguistics, and will be able to translate this knowledge of social interaction into a discernable structure. This person will define and refine the properties of all manner of social activity and how they are related and structured.
In order to provide Go users with the best and most personally curated event recommendations, the Senior Ontology Social Scientist will build and iterate our taxonomy of activities from hyper-local dialectical variations to global trend updates. This position will be expected to update our internal activity ontology according to both institutional knowledge of demographic and sociocultural patterns, as well as your own regularly conducted user research.
While this position requires minimal software engineering knowledge, an understanding of natural language processing would be helpful (but don't worry, we can teach you).
This position requires a rare combination of management and build capability. As a result of being an early hire in the Social Science unit, the successful applicant will have a heavy contributory hand in building out the department's methods, tools, and team.
This job will not be easy- we are looking for a candidate who likes to deal with a lot of ambiguity, back up their work with extensive research, and solve hard problems, both alone and with their team.
Responsibilities
Important Skills
Qualifications
NOTE: Advanced degrees with similar focus to be assessed for relevance.
Previous project management / project oversight experience a plus
We started on this mission by putting together a team of people to fix social isolation and bring people together to do things they love. By looking at how people make plans with one another, we built the Go app around peoples' existing behaviors, like sharing plans with our friends, inviting friends to collaborate, finding time to hang out--and making it all happen in real time, in real life.
We use technology to inspire and empower humanity, and to enrich real-life relationships with friends, family, and community because we believe in a world where social technology unites us and makes us happier.
We also want the local businesses in your community to be part of the conversation, which supercharges the Go app and helps you find what you love to do and do it with the people you already know.
Go represents a new paradigm in social: no harvesting user data, a fully transparent revenue model, and a social technology company whose north star is Patagonia, not Palantir.
We also represent a new paradigm in what is possible at an engineering and data science-heavy technology company. Roughly half of our company is female, LGBTQ, and/or PoC. Our diversity is our greatest superpower and part of our cultural bedrock.
No smart jerks, please:). We're a team of equals who welcome spirited debate in the hopes of building something bigger and better than the sum of our parts.
The Role
This position is all about subtle nuances. A successful Senior Social Scientist, specializing in Activities Ontology, is a person who loves why, when, how, and what we do in our social lives. The right candidate will have the right combination of inventiveness, managerial skills, and technical know-how.
The Senior Ontology Social Scientist will have a deep understanding of cultural anthropology, ethnography, sociology, and linguistics, and will be able to translate this knowledge of social interaction into a discernable structure. This person will define and refine the properties of all manner of social activity and how they are related and structured.
In order to provide Go users with the best and most personally curated event recommendations, the Senior Ontology Social Scientist will build and iterate our taxonomy of activities from hyper-local dialectical variations to global trend updates. This position will be expected to update our internal activity ontology according to both institutional knowledge of demographic and sociocultural patterns, as well as your own regularly conducted user research.
While this position requires minimal software engineering knowledge, an understanding of natural language processing would be helpful (but don't worry, we can teach you).
This position requires a rare combination of management and build capability. As a result of being an early hire in the Social Science unit, the successful applicant will have a heavy contributory hand in building out the department's methods, tools, and team.
This job will not be easy- we are looking for a candidate who likes to deal with a lot of ambiguity, back up their work with extensive research, and solve hard problems, both alone and with their team.
Responsibilities
- Oversee demographic and region-specific human social activity and interest definitions
- Gain insight into social activity correlations within and across populations
- Gather and maintain systemic knowledge of all pertinent activity data at all stages of the data lifecycle- from capture to storage to analysis.
- Identify local terminology and slang for activities and interests, and integrate analogous terms for them into our ‘Activity Ontology' model.
- Identify and optimize ‘activity ontology' term heuristics that provide the end user with the most identifiable, simple, and positive nomenclature for their selected activity.
- Perform qualitative and quantitative assessments of activities created and attended by end-users (i.e. frequency, type, attendance size, etc.)
- Continuously add to and refine our ‘Activity Ontology' database
- Present findings relating to activity correlations, demographic and geographic variations, and activity ‘performance' (relative and absolute) to colleagues on a regular basis
- Identify potential new features or feature enhancements, then working with the product and data science teams to come up with best possible solutions.
- Research, create, and deploy end-user and business surveys as needed (new markets or research question evolution)
- In collaboration with our engineering and data science teams, provide insight and assistance as we build and iterate our ‘Activity Ontology Admin Tool'.
- Perform additional analyses of activity data at regular intervals and as needed by leadership.
Important Skills
- Ability to translate complex scientific concepts(?)into simple, understandable, and logical presentations for colleagues and collaborators.
- Knowledge of qualitative and quantitative data management.
- Strong understanding of basic statistics, including but not limited to population sampling, power calculations, causal inference, basic predictive modeling (linear and logistic regression), multi-population comparative analyses, time series analyses
- Data visualization and storytelling
- Decision tree creation and interpretation
- Basic understanding of relational database architecture and data queries (SQL).
- Familiarity with quantitative analysis tools such as R, Stata, or SPSS
- Familiarity with qualitative analysis tools such as RQDA, NVivo, ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, or similar.
Qualifications
- Advanced degree (Masters or PhD) in any of the following:
- Anthropology
- Sociology
- Social Psychology
- Linguistics
NOTE: Advanced degrees with similar focus to be assessed for relevance.
- 2-3 years of experience in a senior capacity in a non-academic setting
- At least 3 years experience as a working social scientist in the technology industry or adjacent
- Samples of your work:
- At least 3 pertinent publications as first or second author
- At least 3 pertinent presentation examples
- At least 1 analysis of a population survey conducted by you
Previous project management / project oversight experience a plus
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