Job listing: Assistant Sports Analyst

Silver Bulletin is hiring.

I am looking for somebody to assist with improving and rebooting Silver Bulletin¹ sports models. This is a part-time, paid position that will renew monthly, with both parties having the option to wind down the relationship on 30 days' notice. It could become full-time in the future. The near-term priorities are the NFL, NBA, and college basketball models² for these sports’ respective 2025-26 seasons.

I’m not sending this out by email, and I may or may not promote it on social media, depending on the initial number of applicants. So, if you know someone who might be a good fit for the position, please direct them to this post. Some people have already noted their interest in cold emails, which I appreciate — feel free to mention that when you apply.

For the first several months, you’d mostly be assisting with rebooting, improving and maintaining existing models, but this could change down the line when you’d be doing more programming and model-building yourself.³ Typical tasks will include:

• Gathering and parsing data and helping to maintain a current and accurate database of inputs used for the models

• Creating attractive data visualizations based on the model’s output, primarily using Datawrapper

• Automating the model updating process to the greatest extent possible

• Helping to identify potential model errors and inconsistencies (e.g., coding bugs, incorrect data)

• Assisting me in other sports data- and research-driven tasks for the newsletter

• Occasional writing about sports models and sports generally for Silver Bulletin

Job requirements

• Experience with Stata and Python

• Experience with statistical modeling or intensive data analysis

• Keen interest in sports, especially basketball and football

• Although hours are more flexible than for the equivalent politics position, especially in spring/summer 2025 before the models relaunch, you’ll eventually need to be able to do things like update the models for schedule and lineup changes and respond reasonably quickly when there are problems. Thus, the nature and timing of the work will change in September with the start of the NFL and then the NBA and college basketball seasons.

Bonus qualifications

• Experience with creating attractive data visualizations

• Experience with AI tools used to expedite programming

• Experience with R

• Demonstrated writing capabilities

• Enough familiarity with polls and US political data to provide backup in these areas

• Business-side experience in running a subscriber newsletter or another small consumer-facing business

• Continental US time zone

• Familiarity with sports betting

• Although this is not a hard-and-fast requirement, I generally prefer candidates who are not working full time for someone else — but rather balancing this with other self-directed work or study

Hours and compensation

• $40-50/hour

• Expected commitment of +/- 15-20 hours/week — will vary based on sports schedules and product timelines (possibly less than this at first as we’re getting up to speed). I’m happy to go higher than this if we’re getting a lot done.

• Paid monthly, with a minimum guarantee of 50 hours (i.e. I will pay you for 50 hours even if we don’t use all of them) with threshold prorated if employment begins in the middle of the month

• Target start date is May 1, but this is flexible at plus or minus a week or two

• Working job title is Assistant Sports Analyst, we can tweak this within reason if there’s something else you prefer

How to apply

• Email me at NATE DOT SILVER DOT MEDIA at GMAIL DOT COM

• Include the name of the position in the subject heading of the email

• Use your judgment on which materials to include, with the recognition that brevity (putting your best foot forward) and demonstrated evidence of capabilities (e.g., links to projects you’ve worked on) go a long way

• I am expecting to use a two-stage process:

  • Stage 1. Identify semifinalists and conduct follow-up interviews by Zoom. Please do not be discouraged if you are not a semi-finalist; I’m usually fortunate to have plenty of great candidates. I appreciate every application.

  • Stage 2. Identify finalists and have them complete a Sample Task on a 2-3 business day turnaround window — I will pay you at $45/hour for the Sample Task even if you aren’t chosen.

• The deadline to apply is 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25, 2024. I do not expect to contact applicants in advance of the deadline, so please don’t read anything into this! Semifinalist interviews will likely take place beginning the week of April 7. If you expect to be out of pocket that week, please let me know so we can make alternative arrangements. I will be at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on March 7-8 if you’re there and want to say hello, but I don’t want to circumvent the timeline to ensure fairness to all candidates.

1. In some cases, formerly FiveThirtyEight.

2. Have no fear, readers: the NCAA tournament model will return this year, for the 2025 tourney. But I’m also hoping to have college basketball Elo ratings running from the start of the 2025-26 season.

3. If you’ve already built model(s) that you’d like to sell/license to Silver Bulletin, I’m happy to discuss that. I would compensate you separately for this outside of the hourly rate.