Senior Data Scientist, RegLab - Law School
Stanford University· Education / Higher Education· Oct 9, 2026 · 19d ago
Stanford, CA, United States
In office
Full-time
Senior
$140K–$198K est.
Job description
Full Time
This is for a ONE-YEAR FIXED TERM position with the opportunity for extension based on
performance.
Multiple Positions will be Filled
*Budgeted Range: The Law School’s budgeted pay for or this position is: $117,134 -
$130,006 per annum.
The Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab) at Stanford University is looking for
a Senior Data Scientist to help drive forward a diverse research program focused on public sector
artificial intelligence (AI) applications and policy. We are looking for someone who has
excellent technical skills, strong research expertise, good communication skills, and is motivated
by the mission of the lab.
About Us: Stanford RegLab builds the evidence base and technology for effective government.
Our interdisciplinary team of engineers, data scientists, social scientists, and legal experts
partners with agencies at every level—from federal departments to states, counties, and
cities—bringing frontier AI, machine learning, and causal inference to the public sector.
RegLab’s work has prompted an overhaul of tax auditing, mapped racial covenants across
millions of records, and enabled streamlining of statutes and regulations.
As Senior Data Scientist, you will:
● Work closely with the Faculty Director, research leadership, and the rest of the RegLab
team to explore, identify, and implement research projects.
● Lead the design and development of multiple projects using state-of-the-art AI models,
algorithms, statistical models, and other programs designed to improve the public sector.
● Work with large untapped data sets, such as: health and environmental enforcement data,
mass adjudication records, high-resolution satellite imagery, and the largest publicly
available corpus of legal text.
● Mentor and/or manage other data scientists and junior researchers.
● Have the opportunity to receive co-authorship on research papers.
Core Duties:
● Collaborate with interdisciplinary research teams and external stakeholders to identify
high-impact opportunities for applied data science in the public sector.
● Engage with partners to understand their data environments, help shape project goals, and
ensure that technical outputs align with real-world needs and constraints.
● Adapt and refine existing AI models to align with the constraints and ethical
considerations of public sector use cases, including fairness, transparency, and
interpretability.
● Develop and test prototype software and participate in the approval and release process
for new software.
● Prioritize and extract data from a variety of sources such as reports, legal documents,
notes, survey results, and satellite imagery, and maintain its accuracy and completeness.
● Determine additional data collection and reporting requirements.
● Create complex charts and databases, perform statistical analyses, and develop graphs
and tables for publication and presentation.
● Serve as a resource for non-routine inquiries such as requests for statistics or surveys.
● Provide documentation based on audit and reporting criteria to investigators and research
staff.
● Communicate findings and technical insights clearly to both technical and non-technical
audiences through reports, visualizations, presentations, and academic publications.
Preferred Qualifications:
● A bachelor’s degree (MS or Ph.D. preferred) in a scientific or analytic field (e.g., data
science, computer science, statistics, engineering, mathematics, economics, or a related
field) and three years of (a) relevant professional experience or (b) combination of
education and relevant professional experience.
● Strong programming skills in Python or a similar language, including debugging and
writing maintainable code
● Solid grounding in machine learning, NLP, and information retrieval methods, and
experience applying them to large or complex datasets
● Experience with data modeling and database systems for both structured and unstructured
data (e.g., SQL, document or vector stores)
● Experience building reliable, scalable data pipelines with attention to data quality and
validation, including evaluating new tools and frameworks
● Understanding of security best practices for web applications and backend systems, such
as authentication, access control, and handling sensitive data
● Excellent written and verbal communication, including documenting systems, decisions,
and recommendations for technical and non-technical audiences
Nice to Haves:
Specialization in machine learning frameworks (TensorFlow, TF, PyTorch, Scikit Learn,
etc.), NLP, LLM evaluation, LLM-assisted workflows, computer vision, or related fields
Experience with cloud infrastructure and compute resources (e.g., GCP Cloud Run,
Cloud SQL), including recommending tech stacks for research projects
Familiarity with deploying containerized web applications (e.g., Docker, Cloudflare
Pages), such as results dashboards or validation interfaces for partners to review LLM
pipeline outputs
How to apply:
There will be two rounds of application review. The deadline for the first round is 7:00AM PST
on Friday, October 30, 2026. All applications received before this date are guaranteed to be read
while there is a spot open. After this date we will still be accepting applications received by
December 1, however preference will be given to first round applications.
Applicants with Optional Practical Training (OPT) temporary employment authorization are
eligible to apply. Depending on the circumstances, Stanford may sponsor J-1 visas for this
position.
There is a two-step process to be considered for this fellowship:
1. Please submit your resume and cover letter when you apply through Stanford’s career
site – reference job number: 201360
2. Additionally, upload all of the following here reglab.stanford.edu
us/.
• Brief cover letter explaining your interest in the position
• Current resume or CV
• Transcript (unofficial version acceptable)
• Writing/code sample
Core Duties :
• Prioritize and extract data from a variety of sources such as
notes, survey results, medical reports, and laboratory data, and
maintain its accuracy and completeness.
• Determine additional data collection and reporting
requirements.
• Design and customize reports based upon data in the database.
Oversee and monitor regulatory compliance for utilization of the
data.
• Use system reports and analyses to identify potentially
problematic data, make corrections, and eliminate root cause for data
problems or justify solutions to be implemented by others.
• Create complex charts and databases, perform statistical
analyses, and develop graphs and tables for publication and
presentation.
• Serve as a resource for non-routine inquiries such as requests
for statistics or surveys.
• Test prototype software and participate in approval and release
process for new software.
• Provide documentation based on audit and reporting criteria to
investigators and research staff.
Minimum Education :
Bachelor's degree and three years of relevant experience or
combination of education and relevant experience.
Minimum Experience :
Experience in a quantitative discipline such as economics, finance,
statistics or engineering.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities :
• Substantial experience with MS Office and analytical
programs.
• Excellent writing and analytical skills.
• Ability to prioritize workload.
Manage and analyze large amounts of information, which is typically technical or scientific in nature including creating large and complex data sets, abstracting and formatting data, importing and exporting data between files, performing statistical analysis, and preparing reports and manuscripts for publication.
Application prep
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