Data Scientist I at University of Florida
Main Campus (Gainesville
$61,000from the description
Jul 10, 2026
Main Campus (Gainesville
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A statistical consulting role embedded within an agricultural and life-sciences research unit, providing hands-on analytical support to faculty, staff, and graduate students. Day-to-day work spans advising on experimental design, fitting and diagnosing statistical models, producing publication-ready outputs, and writing reproducible analysis scripts primarily in R or Python. The role also involves developing training materials and delivering workshops on applied statistics and data analysis.
Mid level · 2+ years · Gainesville, FL · Bachelor's required · Full-time
Advertised as Junior, but the requirements read as Mid.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $112,215 (middle half $80,482–$139,042). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The role is titled 'Data Scientist I' but the day-to-day work is overwhelmingly applied statistical consulting — ANOVA, mixed models, experimental design, reproducible analysis — rather than ML/AI modeling. 15-2051 (Data Scientists) is the best fit given the title and the breadth of quantitative methods, but 15-2031 (Operations Research Analysts) is a reasonable runner-up given the heavy consulting and applied-statistics orientation.
The advertised level is 'I' (Junior), but the requirements — 2 years of applied statistical experience, demonstrated consulting ability, and advanced methods such as GLMMs and Bayesian analysis — support a Mid-level classification.
R and Python are listed together as 'R and/or Python' in the required qualifications, making them interchangeable hard gates; each is listed as an alternative for the other.
SAS, JMP, Stata, and SPSS appear as secondary tools ('as needed') in the job description and are listed under preferred qualifications, so they are marked preferred with each other as alternatives.
The posting explicitly states that candidates whose background is primarily software engineering, computer science, database administration, or ML without substantial applied statistics experience are not a good fit — reinforcing that statistical methods are the core hard gates.
Machine learning, deep learning, and AI methods are explicitly described as 'desirable' and 'complementary' to the core role, so they are marked preferred.
No specific location is stated in the posting, but the reference to 'IFAS' (Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences) strongly implies the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL.
Ignored 3 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): Bayesian analysis, multivariate analysis, spatial analysis.
Read the full posting
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