Senior Data Scientist

If you are a Data Scientist looking for an opportunity to showcase your problem-solving and programming skills, we would be keen to hear from you. The Senior Data Scientist is a member of the Data Science Centre, which supports Cornerstone’s litigation teams with data wrangling and advanced analytics programming in an environment with multiple simultaneous big data projects. This is a highly autonomous role, suited to a professional comfortable solving a range of non-routine problems with moderate guidance and direction.

Key Responsibilities

• Utilises advanced software tools (e.g. R, SQL, Netezza, SAS, Stata, Git, Python) to clean, build, sample, and prepare data for analysis; construct analytical models; conduct econometric/statistical analysis; and create effective visualisation.
• Drives the adoption of efficient data management and statistical analysis practices using a diverse set of analytic, econometric, database, and programming tools on data-intensive finance and applied economics matters.
• Holds a senior position in firm development projects, including identifying opportunities for reusable code, data pipelines, packaged solutions, and high-value data sources.
• Communicates with experts and clients regarding technical aspects of analysis as required.
• Leads the implementation of advanced techniques, such as text analytics, web data collection, simulations, advanced visualisation, machine learning, and model cross-validation.
• Mentors and supports the development of junior Data Science and consulting staff.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Experience, Skills, and Qualifications

Required:

• 5+ years’ professional experience solving analytical problems using quantitative and programming skills, including advanced data wrangling, complex logic, and large-scale data processing. A master’s or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Business Analytics, or a related field (or equivalent experience) is preferred.
• Ability to solve a range of routine and non-routine problems with moderate supervision.  Strong conceptual understanding of business and analytical context.
• Interest in working across a wide variety of finance and economics matters, including developing tools and packages to enhance ETL efficiency.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to convey technical results and methods to colleagues, clients, and subject-matter experts.
• Demonstrated interest in mentoring and developing others’ programming skills.
• Advanced programming skills in at least 3 of the following: Python, R, SQL, Linux/Unix/Bash/Shell, Git.

Desirable:

• Experience with parallel database systems (e.g. Netezza, Redshift, BigQuery, Snowflake) and/or cloud infrastructure (e.g. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
• Experience processing large data sets using distributed computing frameworks (e.g. Spark, MapReduce).
• Experience with machine learning techniques, including supervised and unsupervised learning, classification and regression models, dimensionality reduction, hyperparameter tuning, and explainability tools (e.g., SHAP, LIME).
• Experience with traditional NLP methods (e.g. TF-IDF, topic modelling, named entity recognition), search tools (e.g. Elasticsearch), and/or LLM workflows (e.g. retrieval-augmented generation, AI agents).
• Familiarity with any of the general-purpose languages (e.g. C, C++, C#, Ruby, Java, JavaScript) and/or statistical programming software (e.g. SAS, STATA, MATLAB).

Application Requirements

Applicants will be asked to submit the following:

• CV
• Cover Letter
• Two references from current employer or university (optional)
• Code portfolio (optional)

About Cornerstone Research

Cornerstone Research provides economic and financial consulting and expert testimony in all phases of complex disputes and regulatory investigations. The firm works with an extensive network of prominent academics and industry practitioners to identify the best-qualified expert for each assignment. With a reputation for high quality and effectiveness, Cornerstone Research has consistently delivered rigorous, state-of-the-art analysis since 1989. The firm has more than 1,000 professionals in nine offices across the United States, UK, and EU.

Cornerstone Research is involved in a broad variety of high-profile projects. Current exemplary matters include claims of anticompetitive conduct, potential mergers and the impact on market competition, the impact of intellectual property infringement, allegations of misleading marketing or false claims, allegations of manipulation of financial markets, evaluation of fair merger prices, securities litigation, claims in consumer finance, anticompetitive conduct in financial markets, and corporate governance issues. We cover topics in a broad range of industries including consumer goods, life sciences, high technology, energy, telecommunications, industrial markets, banking, securities, fintech, private equity, insurance, and cryptocurrency.

More detail on Cornerstone Research and what we do can be found on our website: www.cornerstone.com.

About the Data Science Centre

The Data Science Centre is a close-knit yet expanding team of Data Scientists and Data Engineers, responsible for innovating and streamlining all data-related work at Cornerstone Research. In addition to acting as internal consultants, the team builds and maintains databases and infrastructure, data pipelines, machine learning and NLP models, data visualisation tools, and internal packages.

Examples of recent projects include:

• Fine-tuning the Detectron2 machine learning model to identify specific products in hundreds of thousands of social media images — were influencers promoting a hazardous product?
• Creating novel geospatial data visualisations of industry concentrations across US regions — were there opportunities for monopolistic behaviour among merging firms?
• Developing API pipelines from public and private sources to automate the collection of economic, financial, legal, and healthcare data — how can we reduce manual processes and free time for meaningful modelling?
• Building semi-supervised NLP models to categorise free-form text from millions of Twitter posts — were adult brands engaging with minors in inappropriate ways?

For an interview with Cornerstone's COO discussing more about our team, see Data Science Center Tames Big Data Projects (cornerstone.com).

Equal Opportunities Statement

Cornerstone Research is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants. We do not discriminate based on any legally protected characteristic, including age, sex, gender identity, race, colour, religion or belief, medical condition, disability, marital or pregnancy status, veteran or military status, arrest or conviction record (where permitted by law), sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, or citizenship.