Predoctoral Research Assistant (Contract) – Computational Social Science

Are you a recent college graduate wishing to gain research experience prior to pursuing a Ph.D. in fields related to computational social science (CSS)? Do you have a deep love of “playing with data”—cleaning it, understanding it, combining it, reshaping it, and visualizing in enlightening ways? If so, you might be who we are looking for to fill our contingent virtual lab predoc in the Microsoft Research NYC lab!

About Us

The MSR NYC Computational Social Science group is widely recognized as a leading center of CSS research. Our approach is motivated by tackling two longstanding difficulties for traditional social science: first, that simply gathering observational data on human activity (e.g., who says what to whom, with what effect) is extremely difficult at scale and over time; and second, that running experiments to manipulate the conditions under which these measurements are made (e.g., randomly assigning large sets of interacting people to treatment and control groups) is even more challenging and often impossible.

About You

This role will entail working on one or more research projects with job responsibilities including running online virtual lab experiments, conducting surveys using third-party providers, obtaining, cleaning, and manipulating datasets from the web or other sources, performing statistical analyses, designing/maintaining websites, helping to coordinate the projects, and writing research deliverables. TIME PERIOD: Start Summer 2026 and end date in July/August 2027 The successful candidate will have the following required skills:
  • Bachelor’s degree completed by Summer 2025 (we do not require a specific undergraduate major, though applicants majoring in quantitative fields such as mathematics, statistics, psychology, economics, or computer science have been the most competitive in the past)
  • Demonstrated programming skills (both front- and back-end web programming including JavaScript, HTML, or related frameworks, experience with general purpose languages like Java, C#, C++, or Python, as well as substantial experience programming statistical analyses and visualizations in R)
  • Demonstrated experience doing empirical research
  • Strong quantitative skills (which can be evidenced by coursework in statistics)
  • Demonstrated ability to work independently and to translate high-level objectives into specific programming tasks using a variety of resources (web research, manuals, sample programs, asking colleagues)
  • Please make GitHub page available and/or provide code samples from project
Additional preferred (but not required) skills include:
  • 2+ years’ experience doing empirical research at a consulting firm or government organization
  • Experience with a database language like SQL
The successful candidate will work with Dan Goldstein, Jake Hofman, David Rothschild, and possibly other researchers in the Lab. They will hold a time-limited contingent staff position at Microsoft Research – NYC, located at 300 Lafyette St. in New York, NY. MSR NYC focuses on academic research designed for publication in peer-reviewed journals and includes 25 PhD researchers in the broad area of data science, as well as a number of interns, post-doctoral fellows, and visiting professors from top U.S. universities. The lab also hosts occasional academic seminars open to the broader New York data science community. * We are not able to provide visa sponsorship. Candidates must have work authorization to work in the US. * We are accepting and reviewing applications on a rolling basis. Apply now