Senior Data Scientist

Firm Overview

Roark is an Atlanta-based private equity firm that has over $33 billion in assets under management. We focus our investing in consumer and multi-unit businesses and have acquired 98 franchise/multi-unit brands to date. We have a strong belief that our success has come from an inclusive, collaborative culture of hard workers. Roark’s brands have generated $61 billion in system sales from 66,000 locations in 50 states and 89 countries. Roark’s portfolio includes recognizable brands such as Dunkin’, Arby’s, Anytime Fitness, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jamba Juice, Jimmy John’s, Orangetheory Fitness, Divisions Maintenance Group, and many others.

The Opportunity

Roark is currently building out its Data and Analytics team, with the goal of better leveraging advanced analytic solutions to make sound investment decisions and guide owned businesses to profitable growth. We believe analytics will be a game-changer in the industries we operate in, and we are seeking a Data Scientist to help build and scale our data science and software engineering capabilities. We are a fast-paced, entrepreneurial team – this role will work across many different businesses to understand their needs and design solutions suitable for use across the industries we operate in. It will be heavily project-based working with our deal teams and leadership teams at our owned businesses. The ideal candidate will bring demonstrated experience in structured problem-solving, model building and tuning, building production level analytics products, data collection & cleansing, analytics execution, and communication of meaningful insights to diverse audiences of varying seniority and familiarity with analytic concepts. This position will have the opportunity to work across Roark’s multi-cloud tech stack to design and build leading analytics products that can serve as an example of data science and software engineering best practices across our organization and those of owned companies.

While everyday will be different, responsibilities include:

• Partnering with deal teams and leadership teams of owned businesses to translate complex business problems into data science and advanced analytics solutions

• Understand common trends across our industries to design repeatable and scalable solutions

• Write production level code for robust analytics products

• Collaborate with data and software engineers to support data science solutions through the entire product lifecycle, including data wrangling, exploratory analysis, hypothesis testing, modeling, rapid prototyping, business validation and testing, and deployment

• Leverage a diverse set of large and unstructured data to derive meaningful insights and information sets

• Apply a variety of advanced analytical techniques including predictive modeling, machine learning, time series analysis, simulation, and optimization

• Clearly and concisely synthesize and communicate findings to make thoughtful recommendations by combining business savvy with analytic rigor to technical and non-technical audiences

• Maintain expertise and awareness of emerging data science techniques, technologies, and potential business applications for AI/ML

Basic Qualifications

• Master’s degree in an analytical field such as Data Science, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or Operations Research. 3 additional years of related experience may be substituted in lieu of a degree.

• 3-8 years of relevant data science or software engineering experience developing and deploying production models and writing production code for analytics products

• Experience working with a variety of statistical and modeling techniques including hypothesis testing, supervised learning (classification and regression), forecasting, unsupervised clustering, and optimization

• Experience with Python and SQL including building python packages

• Experience gathering, interpreting, and translating business requirements into analytical solutions

• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex analytical concepts and results at multiple levels to technical and non-technical audiences

• Experience with code version control platforms like GitHub, GitLab, or Azure DevOps

• As a condition of employment, we require all employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 prior to starting work. We are an equal opportunity employer, and will consider a request for exemption from this policy for medical reasons or sincerely-held religious beliefs where reasonable accommodations are possible without imposing undue hardship, to the extent required by law

Desired Qualifications and Experience

• Experience working with data science and analytics teams to develop complex analytics products that have been successfully delivered to customers

• Experience with large-scale data wrangling using databases or Spark

• Knowledge of software engineering best practices for full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, continuous deployments, and testing

• Experience with Google Cloud Platform

• Experience working with docker containers

• Experience working with APIs

• Experience working with a UI or web framework such as Flask, Django, Streamlit, etc.

• Experience working in a fast-paced deadline driven environment

Desired Personal & Leadership Characteristics:

• High standards of integrity, accountability, character, and professionalism

• Excellent mathematical, analytical, and problem-solving skills

• Excellent verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills

• Strong commitment to delivering quality, accurate work with a passion for solving complex business problems through factual analytics

• Ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment with strict deadlines

• Team player who enjoys collaborating with high-intellect colleagues and stakeholders across various functions and backgrounds

• Strong sense of urgency, adaptability, flexibility, and resourcefulness

• Entrepreneurial, agile mindset; someone who wants to take part in building a world-class analytics organization

• Quick learner, high curiosity; strong problem solving and conceptual skills

Roark provides a highly competitive package that includes, but is not limited to:

• Base salary plus annual performance bonus

• Medical, dental, vision, life insurance and long-term disability insurance

• 401k with employer match

• Paid time off and holidays