Principal Researcher - Analytics Practice

The Analytics Practice Area has an opening for a Principal Researcher to provide multifaceted technical and visionary scientific leadership for major research proposals and projects and strategic contributions that accelerate growth in RTI’s business portfolio with modern data and advanced analytic solutions.

The successful candidate will have expertise in psychometrics, statistics, and/or advanced analytics, a primary focus in the education research domain, and robust experience with large-scale assessment studies and data. The successful candidate will lead projects, initiatives, and research in education measurement methods and practice; advise teams and clients in the development and implementation of psychometric analyses for survey and assessment projects; investigate reliability and validity at both the item and composite levels; guide the assessment of measurement invariance; ensure high quality of psychometric and analytic services and results for clients; collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams on study design and methodological reporting; publish and contribute to scientific stature; present at national and international conferences; and expand our innovative offerings through proposals, marketing efforts as a leading RTI expert, and communications with our clients and partner organizations. The successful candidate will have excellent writing and oral communications skills, work well in a team setting, and have attention to quality and detail throughout their work. Experience with federal statistical studies or agencies is preferred.

This position is available as full-time teleworker, hybrid, or in-person in an RTI office location.

• Lead proposals and projects as project director / principal investigator or major task leader of significant scope, scale and impact that contributes to the expansion of business across practice area and the institute’s project portfolio and client offerings.
• Lead and support business development and marketing efforts activities including meeting with prospective clients and coordinating work with internal teams and external partners to monitor proposal and project deliverables, staffing, scope of work, costing, and scheduling.
• Generate business opportunities by leveraging existing work for future work and though networking, professional relationships, and reputation as an expert, specifically in the field of psychometric research, statistics, and/or advanced analytics.
• Expand proposal and project capacity as a leader and mentor in developing talent and upskilling staff in assessment, meaurement, and analytics.
• Provide technical expertise in psychometric services, including item design and calibration, test equating, scaling and linking, item banking and content evaluation, computer adaptive testing specifications, and data review.
• Guide teams in design and implementation of best practices, including research in the development and evaluation of measurement instruments and models and statistical analyses and leveraging technologies.
• Define and develop research and programs to address key scientific issues while supporting a strong, consistent, and sustained revenue base.
• Proactively identify and solve complex problems that impact the management and direction of the business.
• Successfully develop and implement plans to build internal capacity by transferring institutional knowledge of systems and programs to technical leaders.
• As a technical expert, write and review proposals or portions of other colleagues’ proposals to obtain funding from a broad range of clients and funding agencies.
• Investigate and advise regarding feasibility for the most complex and high revenue projects. Serve as a technical expert and partcipate actively in the scientific and peer community and across a broad group of clients.
• Prepare and deliver presentations at professional conferences and client meetings; write articles for scientific journals and other publications.
• Through the careful review of reports, patents, literature and other data, maintain an up-to-date comprehensive understanding of the latest developments in the technical field as it pertains to the scope of responsibility.
• Actively participate in professional societies working with people outside the institute.

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD in psychometrics, psychological testing, or related field and 12 years’ related experience.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and deliver on tight and competing deadlines.
• Strong interpersonal and collaboration skills - oral, written communication, and presentation skills.
• Experience writing/responding to requests for proposals (RFPs) or other equivalent opportunities within the subject area of psychometric design, analysis, scoring and reporting.
• Domain expertise in any of these: education, workforce development, early childhood, educational policy.
• Experience representing psychometric work products or results to non-psychometric parties, clients, or audiences.
• Experience with major statistical software programs such as SAS, R, Stata, SPSS, HLM, and specialized psychometric software (R based IRT packages, BILOG-MG, IRTPro, etc.).
• Demonstrated proficiency with test design, item development, equating design, calibration, scaling/linking, vertical scaling, IRT, Rasch modeling, factor analysis, growth curves, other statistical methods, technical report writing.
• Ability to anticipate problems and develop contingencies before issues arise (i.e. staffing, budget, technical, or personnel-related).
• Demonstration of the RTI Values and Lead Forward behaviors by all employees is critical to the Institute’s success. Behaviors associated with our Values and Lead Forward can been found on RTI Insider and Careers page.
• To qualify, applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States, and should not require, now or in the future, sponsorship for employment visa status.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience measuring constructs beyond academics (e.g., social and emotional learning) preferred.

For San Francisco, CA USA Job Postings Only: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Further information is available here.

The anticipated pay range for this role is listed below. Our pay ranges represent national averages and may vary by location as a geographic differential may be applied to some locations within the United States.

RTI considers multiple factors when making an offer including, for example: established salary range, internal budget, business needs, and education and years of work experience possessed by the applicant. Further, salary is merely one element to our offer.

At RTI, we demonstrate our commitment to rewarding individual and team achievement through a total rewards package. This package includes (among other things) a competitive base salary, a generous paid time off policy, merit based annual increases, bonus opportunities and a robust recognition program. Other benefits include a competitive range of insurance plans (including health, dental, life, and short-term and long-term disability), access to a retirement savings program such as a 401(k) plan, paid parental leave for all parents, financial assistance with adoption expenses or infertility treatments, financial reimbursement for education and developmental opportunities, an employee assistance program, and numerous other offerings to support a healthy work-life balance.

Salary : $225,000 - $278,000