Vail Systems, Inc. Company Profile
The human voice is capable of conveying nuances and meaning that just can’t be expressed through clicks and text messages. And for that reason, voice interactions have always had a special power to shape our perceptions and experiences.  At Vail, we believe in the unique power of voice interactions to create more expressive, more intimate, and more efficient interpersonal interactions. Our experts work with Fortune 500 companies to help them serve their customers more efficiently and effectively through the use of various voice technologies. From basic network services, to state-of-the-art IP telephony, to cutting edge real-time analytics, Vail technology makes millions of voice interactions better every day.

Job Purpose
As millions of interactions move though our networks, billions packets of voice data are analyzed by our systems. Using proprietary technology, we’re measuring things like voice clarity, emotion, and voice stress to better understand and react to changes in conversations.  This analysis has opened the door to new solutions that measure customer satisfaction, speech intelligibility, and fraud propensity in real time. These are practical applications of big data analytics at work.

We’re looking to add a data scientist to our real-time analytics team.  This team is on a mission to explore the wealth of voice data available looking for insights that may lead to new and powerful business applications.  Like the data we’re analyzing, the work is unstructured and the solutions aren’t always clear. It makes for a continual challenge that will require a person with:

• An analytical and creative mind
• A keen eye for pattern recognition
• Natural mathematical ability
• A computational mindset
• A high tolerance for ambiguity
• A highly collaborative disposition
• A positive disposition and a can-do attitude
• The maturity to perform research independently

Essential Responsibilities and Deliverables
As a data scientist, you’ll be analyzing and experimenting with interaction data to find patterns in system or user behavior that can be used to inform business actions. For example, you will be involved in the analysis of audio waveforms helping to uncover patterns of audible factors that represent negative conversational dynamics in a call center.  You’ll then develop prototype applications in Python, MatLab, or R, that recognize these patterns to generate real-time event data that can be channeled into user applications.  Most of your work will be done from either our Deerfield headquarters or our offices in the Chicago loop, but you should also expect to interact directly with our clients from time to time.

Basic Qualifications
To be considered for this position, you must have:

• An advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering or Physics
• Research or work experience focusing on mathematics, data science or software development
• Prior experience in quantitative analysis involving mathematical probability, stochastic calculus, Bayesian inference, time series analysis and machine learning
• Academic or professional experience developing statistical or pattern recognition applications in MatLab, R, or Python

Ideally you will also be able to demonstrate:

• Experience with statistical coding involving machine learning or pattern recognition especially in audio applications
• An understanding of or interest in linguistics and conversational systematics
• Application development experience in an advanced object-oriented language such as C++, Python or Java

If you enjoy solving complex puzzles; if you are fascinated by the dynamics of human communication; if you want to help develop technology that helps people communicate more freely and effectively; talk to us about being a quantitative analyst.