Senior Data Scientist

Job Description

• Senior Data Scientist (Intelligence & Insight Specialist L2)
• Location: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Palmerston North or Tauranga
• About the role | Mō te tūnga

You will be a thought leader in a team of experienced Intelligence and Insight Specialists, with a range of technical capabilities and subject matter expertise. You will have a cutting-edge cloud-based platform at your disposal, including Snowflake, SAS Viya, and Posit products. Can you combine the two, understanding the design of the ‘bigger picture’, building enduring data assets, insights, and analytical outputs? 

You Will Also:

• Work with others to develop and implement enduring and scalable data & analytics solutions
• Develop and embed data, intelligence and insights standards to ensure integrity of IR’s insights assets and maximise their value across the organisation.
• Own and lead initiatives to develop solutions that deliver the right outcomes for customers, IR and the government.
• Support/promote our strategic direction and explore opportunities to move forward in innovative ways.
• Within your area of expertise, coach and mentor others to assist capability uplift and support better customer outcomes.

About you | Mōu

Alongside these core skills you will have experience in: 

• Relationship management with stakeholders and business partners
• Excellent written and oral communication skills to interpret and present complex information in a clear, concise and meaningful way
• Comfort and experience in engaging with people at all levels of the organisation.
• A passion for driving the team/unit forward and a focus on the delivery of great outcomes.

You will also need to have significant applied experience in one or more of the following: 

• Strong programming skills in R and/or Python, with demonstrated ability to write clean, efficient, and well-documented code. In addition, you should have experience in developing reusable code packages and libraries, implementing version control practices, and establishing reproducible analytical workflows
• Strong SQL proficiency to efficiently extract, transform and manipulate data from databases, as well as analytical skills to identify data anomalies, inconsistencies and quality issues.
• Develop and deploy predictive models using supervised and unsupervised techniques, by selecting the appropriate algorithms based on business problems and data characteristics
• Display hands-on experience managing the complete model development lifecycle, including extracting data, conducting exploratory data analysis, feature engineering, model training and validation through to deployment and ongoing performance monitoring / evaluation
• Craft compelling data-driven stories to secure stakeholder buy-in by recommending optimal approaches based on analytical findings / predictive models, with strong storytelling and evidence-based influence to drive decision-making and project success

This is your opportunity to innovate and challenge yourself in a world class service organisation. We offer an agile environment and flexible work practices where you’ll be encouraged to innovate and prioritise your professional development to achieve your career goals. 

About the team | Mō te roopu

Data, Analytics & Insights (DA&I) brings together all the work that revolves around IR’s data into one place. DA&I manages, models and interprets the data to give IR a deeper understanding of what is important to the organisation.

Sitting within DA&I, the Data Analytics Practice Development & Delivery (DAPDAD) team accesses a range of data and analytical tools, products and techniques to derive deeper insight into business problems, allowing the creation of bespoke solutions that fulfil business needs. 

We utilise and connect IRs data with relevant external data, to create a contextual representation of customers tax relevant affairs. This representation, generated through data analytics and modelling, enables a deeper understanding of behaviour and detection of risks, supporting the wider business to apply right-time interactions and interventions. 

As an Intelligence & Insight Specialist in the DAPDAD team, you would be contributing to programmes of work using your data analytics and insights capability. This means you would need to have the skills, knowledge, and experiences to be able to work through complex technical problems and challenge the thinking to get the best outcome. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Intelligence & Insight Specialists in DAPDAD need to have a high level of capability in every technical skill, however proficiency in a number of the technical skills would be a requirement.

• About us | Mō mātou
• Whāia e koe te iti Kahurangi, ki te tūohu koe, me he maunga teitei 
• Pursue excellence – should you stumble, let it be to a lofty mountain. 

Te Tari Taake ‘Inland Revenue’ plays a critical role in improving the economic and social wellbeing of Aotearoa ‘New Zealand’. We do this by collecting and distributing money - we collect 80% of the Crown’s revenue and distribute social support payments. 

We are committed to keeping to the Treaty of Waitangi's guiding principles in our work for and with Māori customers and our employees, their whānau, hapū and iwi. 

Also important to us is how we work - our organisation continues to develop a culture which is customer-centric, intelligence-led, agile, and inclusive. 

Apply here | Tono mai

Please apply online, attach a copy of your CV and a Cover Letter outlining your skills, experience, and knowledge in line with requirements as in the advertisement. For specific queries, including a copy of the role description please email marco.van-hofwegen@ird.govt.nz . 

Application close 5pm, 26 October 2025