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Data Scientist

Chicago, IL (Hybrid workplace)

About Chicago Public Media

Chicago Public Media is one of the nation’s largest local nonprofit news organizations. Home to WBEZ 91.5FM, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Vocalo. Chicago Public Media reaches more than 3.3 million people weekly across broadcast, print, and digital platforms. As a mission-driven organization, we aspire to be the most trusted news source Chicagoans turn to for understanding the people, events, and ideas shaping our community.

Chicago Public Media is a 100% community-funded newsroom powered by nearly 97,000 members whose support makes our journalism possible. This sustained community investment helped drive nationally recognized work in 2025, including 29 awards from esteemed organizations, including the Public Media Journalists Association, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, and the National Association of Black Journalists.

We believe independent journalism is essential to a healthy democracy and that access to objective, fact-based news is a right for every citizen. We serve the public interest by creating diverse content that informs and enriches our community, supported by a dedicated staff of approximately 250 professionals.

For more information, please see the Chicago Public Media Annual Report.

 

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Data Scientist to help us understand how audiences engage with our journalism across platforms (including audio, web, apps, and newsletters) and build models and tools that help grow loyalty and membership.

In this role, you will take ownership of core audience data modeling work, including improving existing propensity models, developing engagement-based audience scoring systems, and connecting newsroom engagement to membership outcomes.

 

General Responsibilities

Newsroom 

  • Identifying patterns that drive meaningful engagement, and building data models that tie those patterns to conversion outcomes
  • Build models that estimate how stories may perform based on topic and format, and use those signals to support editorial planning and story budgeting

Loyalty and membership

  • Identify and quantify meaningful relationships between user behaviors and outcomes such as return visits and membership 
  • Build and improve models to improve the member experience and grow revenue. 
  • Improve campaign targeting and email/newsletter performance through segmentation and modeling

Product, experimentation, and personalization 

  • Provide guidance on experiment design and evaluate results, ensuring tests are statistically sound and insights are accurately interpreted and applied
  • Quantify how product changes impact user experience
  • Build user-level datasets and tools that support content recommendations, audience segmentation, and targeted product experiences on owned channels

Modeling & Impact

  • Work with analytics and engineering to support modeling and segmentation
  • Drive adoption of models and outputs across teams
  • Identify where data science can meaningfully improve decisions and lead the development of solutions to address those gaps.

 

Qualifications

Required

  • Strong SQL skills and experience working with messy and large datasets 
  • Proficiency in Python or R for data analysis and modeling
  • Experience building and applying predictive models in real-world settings
  • Strong foundation in statistics, including experimentation (A/B testing) and interpreting results
  • Experience working with user-level behavioral data (pageviews, sessions, event data)
  • Ability to communicate results clearly and influence decisions
  • Interest in exploring how AI can support analysis and improve internal workflows

Preferred

  • Experience in media, publishing, nonprofit, or subscription-based organizations

 

Reporting and Collaboration

This role reports to the Audience Analytics Manager and works collaboratively across Chicago Public Media, including editorial leadership, product, membership, marketing, and circulation teams.

 

Compensation

The expected pay range for this position is $120,000 - $150,000 per ANNUM.

Chicago Public Media provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the organization reasonably expects to pay for a position.  The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographical location, and external market pay for comparable jobs.

Working at Chicago Public Media

At Chicago Public Media, we care deeply about our employees as we know attracting, developing, and growing talent is key to our success and enhancing our impact.  

Our culture is one where collaboration, diversity of ideas, and innovation are encouraged.  We value colleagues who will enhance our culture by bringing new ideas, divergent experiences, and talents to our dynamic workplace.

At Chicago Public Media we believe dedication to a great workplace includes supporting our employees and their families. As a result, we provide a broad and generous benefits package for employees at hire and in the years to come.

Our benefits include a competitive salary and benefits package which includes medical, dental, vision, vacation, holidays, life insurance, disability coverage, retirement savings, and a commuter benefits plan.

Chicago Public Media is an Equal Opportunity Employer and we actively seek and welcome people from all backgrounds, orientations, and life experiences to join our team.

 

The essential functions described above are not all-inclusive and are not intended to create any contractual or other legal commitment. Chicago Public Media may change the content or format of this job at any time in its sole and exclusive discretion without notice.

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