We are seeking an analyst with a TS/SCI clearance and Mandarin language skills to contribute to our team of China subject matter experts. We can offer you the unusual position of a job with mission and sunlight. The job will entail research, analysis, and writing. Daily responsibilities include reviewing, analyzing, summarizing, and reporting on incoming data.

Thresher. Thresher helps organizations find high-value signals hidden in the noisy world of human-generated text data.  We identify content hidden from standard search approaches or at risk for manipulation. Better content leads to better analysis, and better analysis leads to better decisions. Thresher is a collaborative team of Ph.D.-level data scientists and a former intelligence officer who understands the needs of experts conducting high stakes analyses that have real impact.

DC-area location or willingness to travel is a must for this position. We are a remote company and employees generally work from home. However, visits to client site are important for this role. For that reason, location in the DC area is a plus, and those outside the DC area would be expected to travel to support customer meetings.

What You’ll Do:

• Use our internal data platform and proprietary data science tools to identify trends and anomalous events, and interpret these findings for clients.
• Write reports ranging from time sensitive alerts to in-depth analysis on current events.
• Communicate your analysis to our customer base, and act as a customer success advocate to continuously improve the quality of our product.
• Research and explore new data sources in English and Mandarin.
• Work with our data scientists and engineers to develop novel technology that improves Thresher’s capacity to turn data into actionable insights.
• Deliver insights on existing initiatives and come up with innovative product growth opportunities.
• Represent analytic excellence and consistently challenge our team’s assumptions.

Must have a TS/SCI clearance. We recruit at other times during the year for Subject Matter Experts without clearances and strongly encourage you to check back regularly for our latest openings; however, at this time only applicants with an active TS/SCI will be considered. 

Skills you must demonstrate:

• Professional fluency in Mandarin required (level comparable to HSK V, TOCFL 5, or DLPT/ILR 3).
• Deep knowledge of Chinese culture, including modern history and society.
• Knowledge of international relations and/or the Asia-Pacific region (China in particular).
• Strong experience writing clear and concise reports.
• Demonstrated initiative and problem solving skills.
• Well-organised and efficient; great with deadlines.
• Basic technical proficiency (e.g., adept in Microsoft Office, Google Docs suite).

You do not need to have data analytics or engineering experience for this job, but you should show interest and capacity to learn new skills as you will be working closely with technical teams.

Skills that are differentiators:

Our Subject Matter Experts come from a wide range of backgrounds and expertise. We’d love to hear what makes you uniquely able to serve our customers. Some of the qualities that have made SMEs stand out in the past include:

• A passion for communicating findings visually with charts, graphics, and visually pleasing templates.
• Love to solve problems with code, easily turning to Python or R to scrape, clean, and visualize data. Takes pride in forming complex boolean queries to isolate answers.
• Extensive in-country experience and a nuanced understanding of Chinese social media
• A “futurist” in analysis, with exposure to ElasticSearch/ELK Stack, machine learning, and/or natural language processing.
• Broad exposure to the federal government and an on-going passion for mission.
• Collaboration with teams of diverse specialties, and a love for integrating the best each brings to the table.

Why Thresher?  This is a great opportunity to collaborate on a team with diverse data and social science experience and work on challenging technical problems with a meaningful mission in the national security and commercial sectors. Our team is made up of veteran entrepreneurs and world-class data scientists, engineers, and subject matter experts. 

Compensation is competitive and includes paid time off for 20 days of vacation, 9 federal holidays, and 9 days of sick leave. We cover 100% of health care premiums for employees and 50% of premiums for spouses and dependents as well as the premiums for short and long-term disability plus life insurance. We match your contributions to a SIMPLE IRA up to 3% of your salary.

How to Apply. If you are interested, please submit (1) a cover letter describing a challenging problem you solved and why you are interested in working with Thresher, and (2) a resume.

All applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin. We welcome applications from veterans. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.