Data Scientist II

ACT is seeking a Data Scientist II to help build a new pathway navigation experience that helps high school students explore, plan, and take confident next steps toward college and career. This role will design, test, and validate the data models that power personalized college, career, and pathway recommendations. You will work cross-functionally with product, engineering, research, design, and business partners to combine student, education, assessment, interest, skills, and career data into relevant, explainable, and actionable recommendations. You will move quickly from early experimentation to production implementation while ensuring that models are accurate, transparent, fair, and appropriate for use with students and families., * Design, prototype, and evaluate models that generate personalized college, career, and pathway recommendations

• Apply statistical modeling, machine learning, and generative AI to rapidly test and improve product capabilities
• Evaluate model performance, fairness, bias, and appropriate use

Product Data and Experimentation:

• Design data collection strategies that capture student behavior, performance, and engagement while supporting rapid product development
• Analyze pilot and user-study data and translate findings into actionable product recommendations
• Define metrics and experiments to evaluate recommendation quality and product impact

Data Architecture and Production:

• Partner with engineers to build scalable cloud-based data pipelines and move models from prototype into production
• Integrate data from student, education, assessment, skills, career, and labor-market sources
• Establish reliable processes for data security, model documentation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance

Student-Centered Personalization:

• Develop approaches that produce useful recommendations when student data is incomplete and adapt as new information becomes available
• Use behavioral and performance data to support personalized and adaptive product experiences
• Make model outputs understandable and actionable for various stakeholders

Cross-Organizational Collaboration:

• Collaborate across teams to align data, modeling, research, and product requirements
• Translate research and business needs into data collection plans and technical solutions
• Communicate analytical findings, assumptions, risks, and tradeoffs to technical and nontechnical stakeholders

• Bachelor’s degree in data science, computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, economics, operations research, or a related quantitative discipline, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• At least 3 years of applied data science experience, including building statistical or machine-learning models and analyzing product experiments, pilots, or user studies
• Proficiency in Python and SQL, with experience developing scalable data pipelines and moving data products or models from prototype toward production

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• A hands-on, product-oriented data scientist who can move from analysis and rapid prototyping to production implementation
• Strong in statistical modeling, machine learning, experimental design, and model evaluation
• Experienced in scalable data pipelines, cloud environments, and integrating complex data sources
• Skilled at using behavioral and performance data to develop personalized product experiences
• Thoughtful about responsible AI, including fairness, bias mitigation, transparency, privacy, and appropriate use
• An effective cross-functional communicator who translates research and business needs into actionable technical solutions

It’s a plus if you have (preferred requirements):

• Master’s degree in data science or related field
• Experience with recommender systems, generative AI, natural language processing, or personalized and adaptive systems
• Experience with education, assessment, career, workforce, labor-market, occupational, or skills data

ACT, Inc. life insurance, paid time off, paid holidays, 401(k) United States, Iowa, Iowa City Oct 10, 2026

At ACT, Your Work Makes a Difference

Education has power - a power that changes lives forever. It creates opportunities that lift up individuals, their families, and sparks societal change that echoes through generations to come. From our grassroots we have fought the good fight for equity in education, and we remain devoted to helping anyone who struggles to access that power. This is what matters to us and we must do better – we’ve never been more sure of our purpose.

ACT team members are part of an organization dedicated to a mission that has never been more important: Helping people achieve education and workplace success. Advancing that mission within our organization, by helping our team members achieve education and workplace success of their own, is core to our values. ACT values a diverse workplace and is committed to fostering an inclusive, equitable environment in which every team member has an opportunity to grow.

We want our team members to have the well-being and confidence they need to do their best work, in an environment where both they and ACT thrive. To support this, our total rewards include company paid life insurance, medical, dental, vision, flexible health and dependent spending accounts, 401(k) retirement savings with company match, paid holidays, paid time off, and so much more. You can find a comprehensive list of our benefits here., The finalist will be hired at the salary and level commensurate with their qualifications. For this position, we anticipate offering an annual salary in the range of $95,000 to $105,000. ACT manages salaries within the range based on relevant factors including, skills, experience, and internal equity.

When ACT was founded in 1959, it disrupted the assessment industry with a new approach to helping students better understand their readiness so they could take steps to improve it. By leveraging our expertise and authority in assessment and research, we will again disrupt the industry-helping more people learn, better measure their progress, and improve their navigation through life’s transitions.

More than ever before, ACT is fulfilling its mission of helping people achieve education and workplace success. We’re doing it by pushing the boundaries of learning innovation through the work of our people, who we call team members because we’re all in this together.

We know transformation does not come without challenge. That’s why ACT invests in a variety of experiences for team members to strengthen their connections, explore ideas, learn from customers, and celebrate success.