[Hiring] Principal Labor Market Data Scientist @UKG

Role Description

We are seeking a Principal Labor Market Data Scientist to lead hands-on research and analysis focused on labor and workforce insights. As a senior individual contributor, you will own work from defining the question and investigating the data through validating findings and explaining their significance to business leaders.

This role is dedicated to supporting UKG senior leaders, Corporate Communications, and our labor economists with evidence for executive-to-executive discussions, media interviews, press releases, and thought leadership. Working closely with our economist colleagues, you will combine UKG workforce data with external labor market sources to develop timely insights that inform executive discussions and external communications. You will bring the technical depth to build the analysis and the judgment to determine what the evidence supports.

Responsibilities

• Partner with labor economists and Communications to define research questions and produce validated analyses, charts, and supporting materials for executive briefings, customer discussions, and media preparation.
• Lead original research on hiring, separations, hours worked, wages, labor supply, and other workforce trends.
• Identify questions that matter to employers and workers, and investigate changes across industries, geographies, and workforce segments.
• Deliver executive briefings, charts, talking points, and supporting analysis for customer discussions and media engagements.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with experience translating quantitative findings into concise, accurate materials for leaders, business audiences, or public use.
• Own the analytical response to urgent executive and media questions.
• Combine large-scale UKG workforce data with public and commercial labor data.
• Develop and validate statistical methods for workforce indicators, trends, and comparisons.
• Build reproducible analysis and recurring reporting workflows using SQL and Python.
• Review the numerical accuracy and interpretation of findings, charts, and proposed public claims.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and data owners to resolve source issues and improve the datasets supporting workforce insights.
• Provide technical leadership and mentor data scientists through research design, code review, and stakeholder discussions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in statistics, data science, economics, computer science, mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
• 8+ years of relevant experience in data science, applied statistics, quantitative research, or a related field.
• Substantial hands-on experience analyzing labor market or workforce data in recent professional roles.
• Deep applied statistical expertise, including time-series analysis, sampling and weighting, hypothesis testing, and uncertainty estimation.
• Strong SQL and Python skills.
• Demonstrated ability to assess data quality and representativeness.
• Ability to explain analytical findings, methods, and limitations clearly.
• Ability to lead ambiguous research assignments independently.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in a relevant quantitative discipline.
• Recent experience developing labor market research, indicators, or data products.
• Experience supporting corporate communications, economic publications, executive briefings, or media preparation.
• Experience with econometrics, forecasting, or causal inference applied to labor and workforce questions.
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform and BigQuery.

Benefits

• The pay range for this position is $150,500 to $214,500.
• Employees may be eligible to participate in a performance-based bonus plan.
• Restricted stock unit awards as part of total compensation.
• Learn more about UKG’s benefits and rewards at UKG Benefits .

Company Description

UKG is the Workforce Operating Platform with unified HR, payroll, and workforce management, built to solve the unique challenges of frontline work. Powered by people-first AI and decades of labor data, UKG turns workforce intelligence into real-time decisions around staffing, pay, compliance, and productivity.