senior-data-scientist

name	senior-data-scientist
description	null
license	MIT + Commons Clause
metadata	{"version":"1.0.0","author":"borghei","category":"engineering","domain":"data-science","updated":"2026-03-31T00:00:00.000Z","tags":["data-science","ml","statistics","experimentation","python","mlops"]}

Senior Data Scientist

Expert data science for statistical modeling, experimentation, ML deployment, and data-driven decision making.

Keywords

data-science, machine-learning, statistics, a-b-testing, causal-inference, feature-engineering, mlops, experiment-design, model-deployment, python, scikit-learn, pytorch, tensorflow, spark, airflow

---

Quick Start

# Design an experiment with power analysis
python scripts/experiment_designer.py --input data/ --output results/

# Run feature engineering pipeline
python scripts/feature_engineering_pipeline.py --target project/ --analyze

# Evaluate model performance
python scripts/model_evaluation_suite.py --config config.yaml --deploy

# Statistical analysis
python scripts/statistical_analyzer.py --data input.csv --test ttest --output report.json

---

Tools

Script	Purpose
scripts/experiment_designer.py	A/B test design, power analysis, sample size calculation
scripts/feature_engineering_pipeline.py	Automated feature generation, correlation analysis, feature selection
scripts/statistical_analyzer.py	Hypothesis testing, causal inference, regression analysis
scripts/model_evaluation_suite.py	Model comparison, cross-validation, deployment readiness checks

---

Tech Stack

Category	Tools
Languages	Python, SQL, R, Scala
ML Frameworks	PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, XGBoost
Data Processing	Spark, Airflow, dbt, Kafka, Databricks
Deployment	Docker, Kubernetes, AWS SageMaker, GCP Vertex AI
Experiment Tracking	MLflow, Weights & Biases
Databases	PostgreSQL, BigQuery, Snowflake, Pinecone

---

Workflow 1: Design and Analyze an A/B Test

1. Define hypothesis -- State the null and alternative hypotheses. Identify the primary metric (e.g., conversion rate, revenue per user).
2. Calculate sample size -- python scripts/experiment_designer.py --input data/ --output results/
   • Specify minimum detectable effect (MDE), significance level (alpha=0.05), and power (0.80).
   • Example: For baseline conversion 5%, MDE 10% relative lift, need ~31,000 users per variant.
3. Randomize assignment -- Use hash-based assignment on user ID for deterministic, reproducible splits.
4. Run experiment -- Monitor for sample ratio mismatch (SRM) daily. Flag if observed ratio deviates >1% from expected.
5. Analyze results:

   from scipy import stats
   
   # Two-proportion z-test for conversion rates
   control_conv = control_successes / control_total
   treatment_conv = treatment_successes / treatment_total
   z_stat, p_value = stats.proportions_ztest(
       [treatment_successes, control_successes],
       [treatment_total, control_total],
       alternative='two-sided'
   )
   # Reject H0 if p_value < 0.05
   

6. Validate -- Check for novelty effects, Simpson's paradox across segments, and pre-experiment balance on covariates.

Workflow 2: Build a Feature Engineering Pipeline

1. Profile raw data -- python scripts/feature_engineering_pipeline.py --target project/ --analyze
   • Identify null rates, cardinality, distributions, and data types.
2. Generate candidate features:
   • Temporal: day-of-week, hour, recency, frequency, monetary (RFM)
   • Aggregation: rolling means/sums over 7d/30d/90d windows
   • Interaction: ratio features, polynomial combinations
   • Text: TF-IDF, embedding vectors
3. Select features -- Remove features with >95% null rate, near-zero variance, or >0.95 pairwise correlation. Use recursive feature elimination or SHAP importance.
4. Validate -- Confirm no target leakage (no features derived from post-outcome data). Check train/test distribution alignment.
5. Register -- Store features in feature store with versioning and lineage metadata.

Workflow 3: Train and Evaluate a Model

1. Split data -- Stratified train/validation/test split (70/15/15). For time series, use temporal split (no future leakage).
2. Train baseline -- Start with a simple model (logistic regression, gradient boosted trees) to establish a benchmark.
3. Tune hyperparameters -- Use Optuna or cross-validated grid search. Log all runs to MLflow.
4. Evaluate on held-out test set:

   from sklearn.metrics import classification_report, roc_auc_score
   
   y_pred = model.predict(X_test)
   y_prob = model.predict_proba(X_test)[:, 1]
   
   print(classification_report(y_test, y_pred))
   print(f"AUC-ROC: {roc_auc_score(y_test, y_prob):.4f}")
   

5. Validate -- Check calibration (predicted probabilities match observed rates). Evaluate fairness metrics across protected groups. Confirm no overfitting (train vs test gap <5%).

Workflow 4: Deploy a Model to Production

1. Containerize -- Package model with inference dependencies in Docker:

   docker build -t model-service:v1 .
   

2. Set up serving -- Deploy behind a REST API with health check, input validation, and structured error responses.
3. Configure monitoring:
   • Input drift: compare incoming feature distributions to training baseline (KS test, PSI)
   • Output drift: monitor prediction distribution shifts
   • Performance: track latency P50/P95/P99 targets (<50ms / <100ms / <200ms)
4. Enable canary deployment -- Route 5% traffic to new model, compare metrics against baseline for 24-48 hours.
5. Validate -- python scripts/model_evaluation_suite.py --config config.yaml --deploy confirms serving latency, error rate <0.1%, and model outputs match offline evaluation.

Workflow 5: Perform Causal Inference

1. Assess assignment mechanism -- Determine if treatment was randomized (use experiment analysis) or observational (use causal methods below).
2. Select method based on data structure:
   • Propensity Score Matching: when treatment is binary, many covariates available
   • Difference-in-Differences: when pre/post data available for treatment and control groups
   • Regression Discontinuity: when treatment assigned by threshold on running variable
   • Instrumental Variables: when unobserved confounding present but valid instrument exists
3. Check assumptions -- Parallel trends (DiD), overlap/positivity (PSM), continuity (RDD).
4. Estimate treatment effect and compute confidence intervals.
5. Validate -- Run placebo tests (apply method to pre-treatment period, expect null effect). Sensitivity analysis for unobserved confounding.

---

Performance Targets

Metric	Target
P50 latency	< 50ms
P95 latency	< 100ms
P99 latency	< 200ms
Throughput	> 1,000 req/s
Availability	99.9%
Error rate	< 0.1%

---

Common Commands

# Development
python -m pytest tests/ -v --cov
python -m black src/
python -m pylint src/

# Training
python scripts/train.py --config prod.yaml
python scripts/evaluate.py --model best.pth

# Deployment
docker build -t service:v1 .
kubectl apply -f k8s/
helm upgrade service ./charts/

# Monitoring
kubectl logs -f deployment/service
python scripts/health_check.py

---

Reference Documentation

Document	Path
Statistical Methods	references/statistical_methods_advanced.md
Experiment Design Frameworks	references/experiment_design_frameworks.md
Feature Engineering Patterns	references/feature_engineering_patterns.md
Automation Scripts	scripts/ directory

---

Troubleshooting

Problem	Cause	Solution
Sample size calculation returns unreasonably large numbers	Minimum detectable effect (MDE) is set too small relative to baseline variance	Increase MDE to a practically meaningful threshold or accept longer experiment duration
Feature pipeline reports high null rates across all generated features	Source data contains upstream ingestion gaps or schema drift	Validate raw data completeness before running the pipeline; check ETL logs for failed loads
Model AUC drops significantly on validation vs. training set	Overfitting due to high-cardinality features or insufficient regularization	Apply stronger regularization, reduce feature set, or increase training data volume
Experiment shows significant results but large confidence intervals	Insufficient sample size or high metric variance	Extend experiment runtime, increase traffic allocation, or switch to a variance-reduction technique (CUPED)
Deployed model latency exceeds P95 targets	Model complexity too high for serving infrastructure or missing batching	Quantize the model, reduce input feature count, or enable request batching on the serving layer
Feature importance scores are unstable across cross-validation folds	Correlated features cause importance to shift between redundant predictors	Remove highly correlated features (>0.95) before training or use permutation importance with repeated runs
Causal inference estimates show implausible treatment effects	Violation of parallel trends assumption (DiD) or poor covariate overlap (PSM)	Run diagnostic tests (placebo checks, overlap histograms) and consider alternative identification strategies

---

Success Criteria

• Model discrimination: AUC-ROC above 0.85 on held-out test set for classification tasks
• Calibration quality: Brier score below 0.15; predicted probabilities within 5% of observed rates across decile bins
• Feature coverage: Feature importance analysis accounts for at least 90% of cumulative model importance
• Experiment power: All A/B tests designed with statistical power of 0.80 or higher at the specified MDE
• Deployment readiness: Model serving latency under 100ms at P95; error rate below 0.1%
• Reproducibility: All experiments and training runs logged with full parameter tracking; results reproducible from logged artifacts
• Data quality: Input feature pipelines maintain less than 2% null rate on critical features after imputation

---

Scope & Limitations

This skill covers:

• End-to-end experiment design including power analysis, randomization, and post-hoc analysis
• Feature engineering pipelines with profiling, generation, selection, and validation
• Model training evaluation including cross-validation, calibration, and fairness checks
• Production model deployment with monitoring, drift detection, and canary rollouts

This skill does NOT cover:

• Data engineering infrastructure (ETL orchestration, pipeline scheduling, data lake management) -- see senior-data-engineer
• Deep learning model architecture design and training at scale (distributed GPU training, custom layers) -- see senior-ml-engineer
• Prompt engineering, RAG systems, and LLM fine-tuning workflows -- see senior-prompt-engineer
• Computer vision pipelines (object detection, segmentation, video processing) -- see senior-computer-vision

---

Integration Points

Skill	Integration	Data Flow
senior-data-engineer	Feature pipeline ingests data from ETL outputs; shares data quality validation patterns	Raw data stores --> feature engineering pipeline --> feature store
senior-ml-engineer	Trained models handed off for MLOps deployment; shares model registry and serving configs	Evaluated model artifacts --> deployment pipeline --> production serving
senior-prompt-engineer	Embedding features from LLMs feed into ML pipelines; experiment frameworks apply to prompt A/B tests	LLM embeddings --> feature vectors; experiment designs --> prompt evaluation
senior-architect	Model serving architecture reviewed for scalability; data platform design aligned with training infrastructure	Architecture specs --> deployment topology --> monitoring dashboards
senior-backend	Model inference endpoints integrated into backend services; API contracts defined for prediction requests	REST/gRPC model API --> backend service layer --> client applications
senior-devops	CI/CD pipelines extended for model retraining triggers; containerized model images deployed via infrastructure-as-code	Docker images --> Kubernetes manifests --> production clusters

---

Tool Reference

experiment_designer.py

Purpose: A/B test design, statistical power analysis, and sample size calculation. Validates experiment configuration and produces structured results with timestamps.

Usage:

python scripts/experiment_designer.py --input data/ --output results/

Flags/Parameters:

Flag	Short	Required	Description
--input	-i	Yes	Input path (directory or file containing experiment data)
--output	-o	Yes	Output path (directory for results)
--config	-c	No	Path to configuration file (YAML or JSON)
--verbose	-v	No	Enable verbose (DEBUG-level) logging output

Example:

python scripts/experiment_designer.py -i data/experiment_config/ -o results/power_analysis/ -c config.yaml -v

Output Format: JSON to stdout with the following structure:

{
  "status": "completed",
  "start_time": "2026-03-21T10:00:00.000000",
  "processed_items": 0,
  "end_time": "2026-03-21T10:00:01.000000"
}

---

feature_engineering_pipeline.py

Purpose: Automated feature generation, correlation analysis, and feature selection. Profiles raw data, generates candidate features, and validates for target leakage.

Usage:

python scripts/feature_engineering_pipeline.py --input data/ --output features/

Flags/Parameters:

Flag	Short	Required	Description
--input	-i	Yes	Input path (directory or file containing raw data)
--output	-o	Yes	Output path (directory for generated features)
--config	-c	No	Path to configuration file (YAML or JSON)
--verbose	-v	No	Enable verbose (DEBUG-level) logging output

Example:

python scripts/feature_engineering_pipeline.py -i data/raw/ -o features/v2/ -v

Output Format: JSON to stdout with the following structure:

{
  "status": "completed",
  "start_time": "2026-03-21T10:00:00.000000",
  "processed_items": 0,
  "end_time": "2026-03-21T10:00:01.000000"
}

---

model_evaluation_suite.py

Purpose: Model comparison, cross-validation, and deployment readiness checks. Validates serving latency, error rates, and confirms model outputs match offline evaluation.

Usage:

python scripts/model_evaluation_suite.py --input models/ --output evaluation/

Flags/Parameters:

Flag	Short	Required	Description
--input	-i	Yes	Input path (directory or file containing model artifacts)
--output	-o	Yes	Output path (directory for evaluation results)
--config	-c	No	Path to configuration file (YAML or JSON)
--verbose	-v	No	Enable verbose (DEBUG-level) logging output

Example:

python scripts/model_evaluation_suite.py -i models/xgb_v3/ -o evaluation/report/ -c prod_config.yaml

Output Format: JSON to stdout with the following structure:

{
  "status": "completed",
  "start_time": "2026-03-21T10:00:00.000000",
  "processed_items": 0,
  "end_time": "2026-03-21T10:00:01.000000"
}

Note: The Tools table references scripts/statistical_analyzer.py but this script does not yet exist in the repository. Statistical analysis workflows described in the SKILL.md can be performed using inline Python (scipy, statsmodels) as shown in Workflow 1 and Workflow 5.