Data Scientist

Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute; Texas; On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute seeks a collaborative Data Scientist to support Health & Public Safety projects and the broader Institute. You will harmonize data from EMS, law enforcement, 911 centers, and fire departments, build pipelines, and develop models to identify call types, delivering visualizations and reports for internal and external audiences.

Preferred location is Texas, with up to 10% travel.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in data collection, cleaning, and analysis of justice system data.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to collaborate across teams to make data-cleaning decisions.
• Bachelor's degree in data science, public health, statistics/biostatistics, or related field.
• At least two years of relevant professional experience.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Proficiency in R for data-cleaning, analysis, and reporting workflows.
• Experience developing and deploying dashboards for public and layperson consumption.

Responsibilities

• Provide full-time operational support for Health & Public Safety Team projects.
• Analyze quantitative and qualitative data for program evaluations.
• Lead data science research with data processing, statistics, and machine learning.
• Develop and validate methods to identify behavioral health-related 911 call types.
• Serve as primary contact for assigned projects.
• Collaborate with the Data, Research, & Analysis Team to meet timelines.
• Maintain data sources and automate recurring tasks.
• Create visualizations and dashboards for deliverables.
• Document data-cleaning procedures and methodological decisions.

Skills

Data cleaning & analysis

Cross-team collaboration

Data visualization

R programming

Statistical analysis

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in data science or related field

Tools

R

Python

SQL

Quarto

Git

Netlify

Leaflet

Highcharter

Job description

Reports To: Senior Vice President of Health and Public Safety

Position Summary: The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute (Meadows Institute) seeks a collaborative and strategic professional to support the work of Health & Public Safety Team and the Meadows Institute as a whole. The Data Scientist will work with other members of the Health & Public Safety Team to support the Institute’s health and public safety portfolio.

This role involves multi-site data collection, harmonization, analysis, and reporting across a range of public safety agencies, including emergency medical services (EMS), law enforcement, 911 communications centers, and fire departments, to identify behavioral health-related calls for service. The ideal candidate will have strong experience cleaning, transforming, and harmonizing complex, often unstructured datasets from multiple sources, including public safety operational systems.

The candidate will be responsible for creating data pipelines, developing models to identify call types, building data visualizations and dashboards to monitor the project’s progress, and completing deliverables that are aligned with the Meadows Institute’s mission and strategy.

The preferred work location for this position is in Texas. This position may not be filled or performed in California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, or Washington at this time. Statewide travel (up to 10%) may be required. Some duties may require access to reliable personal transportation.

Responsibilities

• Provide full-time operational support for the Health & Public Safety Team’s portfolio of projects.
• Analyze quantitative and qualitative data to contribute to program evaluations and strategic assessments.
• Conduct and support fairness-related and cross-sector data science applied research projects with technical depth, including areas of data processing and exploration, statistical and causal inference, data modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
• Identify, prototype, and validate novel and expanded methods to solve analytic impediments to identifying behavioral health-related calls to 911 call centers.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for assigned projects.
• Work collaboratively with the Meadows Institute Data, Research, & Analysis Team to track and meet project timelines and deliverables.
• Maintain data sources and databases, including requests for new data sources, creating new databases for larger-than-memory data, and developing functions to automate frequently recurring tasks.
• Create visualizations, dashboards, and quantitative summaries for internal and external deliverables.
• Document data-cleaning procedures, coding workflows, and methodological decisions to support transparency, reproducibility, and communication across technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Other duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• Proven experience in a data science role, with a strong background in data collection, cleaning, and analysis of justice system data.
• Strong problem-solving skills and demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively across internal and external teams, including stakeholders with varying levels of technical experience, to make and review data-cleaning and methodological decisions.
• Bachelor’s degree in data science, public health, statistics/biostatistics, quantitative psychology/criminal justice, computer science, or other related field.
• A minimum of two years of relevant professional experience.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• A strong quantitative research background and statistical and programming proficiency.
• Robust experience coding in R, including proficiency in developing, maintaining, and modifying R-based data-cleaning, analysis, and reporting workflows.
• Experience developing and deploying dashboards for public and layperson consumption.
• Demonstrated ability to clearly document coding practices, data-cleaning procedures, and methodological decisions for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to work independently as well as collaboratively with colleagues. This includes overcoming geographic and other potential barriers to communicating with and making contributions to the team’s work.
• Excellent organizational skills, including the ability to manage multiple tasks and projects simultaneously while meeting deadlines.
• Proactive work style with an interest and ability to innovate new ways to strengthen project processes and outcomes.
• Capacity to think and behave strategically, critically, and analytically.
• Flexibility in working with new issues, topics, and approaches.

Preferred Qualifications

• 3 to 5 years of professional-level experience in a related role.
• Knowledge of the justice sector or public safety systems.
• Proficiency in additional programming languages, such as Python and SQL, and other relevant research and analytic technologies.
• Experience with Quarto, Git, and website-hosting platforms such as Netlify.
• Experience creating interactive data visualizations using R packages such as Leaflet, Highcharter, and Reactable.

Eligibility Requirements

The preferred work location for this position is in Texas. This position may not be filled or performed in California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, or Washington at this time. Relocation assistance not available. Successful candidates must show proof of eligibility to work in the United States.

About Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute

The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute is a data-driven, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that supports the implementation of policies and programs that help Texans obtain effective, efficient mental health care when and where they need it. The Institute’s vision is for Texas to be the national leader in treating all people with mental health needs.

The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute is committed to equality of opportunity in all aspects of employment and provides full and equal employment opportunities to all employees and potential employees without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), physical or mental disability, age, citizen status, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status.