Competitive Data Scientist (Kaggle)

Weekday AI

17d • $60 - $120 • Remote

About The Position

This contractor role is for a client and pays $60–$120 per hour. It is fully remote globally, with approximately 15 hours of work per week and a flexible schedule. The successful candidate will apply competitive data science experience and expertise in data science, machine learning, statistical modeling, and applied mathematics to design rigorous coding and data science tasks and evaluate AI-generated solutions.

The role involves creating reproducible execution environments, preparing datasets and dependencies, developing accurate reference solutions, and building automated testing and evaluation mechanisms. The candidate will run AI coding agents on tasks, analyze performance and failure patterns, identify methodological or implementation problems, document task requirements and verification procedures, and iteratively improve task complexity and evaluation reliability.

Requirements

• Demonstrated experience in data science, machine learning, quantitative modeling, applied mathematics, or a related technical field.
• Participation in competitive data science or machine learning platforms, such as Kaggle, DrivenData, Zindi, AIcrowd, Numerai, DataSource.ai, or CodaLab/Codabench.
• Strong analytical reasoning and ability to break down complex problems into structured, testable solutions.
• Practical programming skills sufficient to independently implement, test, debug, and validate technical solutions.
• Understanding of statistical methods, predictive modeling, data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation.
• Ability to identify data leakage, overfitting, flawed assumptions, and methodological errors.
• Experience evaluating model performance and validating results against reliable benchmarks.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to communicate technical reasoning clearly.
• Competitive data science and Kaggle competition skills.
• Machine learning, Python programming, statistical analysis, mathematical reasoning, data modeling, and model evaluation skills.
• Testing, debugging, and solution validation skills.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with DrivenData, Zindi, AIcrowd, Numerai, or similar competition platforms.
• Strong Python development skills, including working with unfamiliar codebases.
• Experience with pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, PyTorch, or TensorFlow.
• Knowledge of automated testing, reproducible environments, and dependency management.
• Experience developing evaluation benchmarks and automated grading systems.
• Familiarity with AI coding agents, LLM-based development tools, and agent evaluation.
• Experience in quantitative research, optimization, feature engineering, and advanced statistical modeling.

Responsibilities

• Design challenging data science, machine learning, and mathematical modeling tasks based on real-world problems and competitive programming experience.
• Build reproducible execution environments, prepare datasets, configure dependencies, and ensure consistent task execution.
• Implement accurate, efficient, and verifiable reference solutions.
• Develop automated tests, validation criteria, and evaluation frameworks to distinguish correct solutions from incomplete, inefficient, or flawed implementations.
• Run AI coding agents against tasks, analyze their performance and failure patterns, and refine task specifications based on observed results.
• Identify implementation bugs, incorrect assumptions, data leakage, methodological weaknesses, and other issues that compromise solution quality.
• Document problem statements, expected outputs, solution methodologies, dependencies, and verification procedures.
• Improve task complexity, reproducibility, and evaluation reliability through iterative testing and experimentation.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Part-time
• Education Level: No Education Listed