John Deere at Research Park is interested in statistics students looking for part-time employment who would be available to start soon and work at least through December 2014. The opportunity is similar in concept to a year-round internship, but it’s a “Research Assistant” position at Deere rather than part of John Deere’s intern program. They are looking for someone with a combination of Statistics and CS skills, so they can manage our Linux cluster and help us figure out how to work with Apache Hadoop database and statistics packages like Hive, Hbase, Mahout, RHIPE (Purdue) and maybe BigR (Adatao) to analyze our data.

This would be part-time employment throughout the calendar year, averaging 20 hours per week (more in the summer and less during the semesters). R and data mining experience are very important to this role, so grad students (or upper-level undergrads with R and data mining experience) would most likely be the best candidates. Preference will be given to students they have a chance of hiring after graduation, and international candidates would be considered.

Additional details are included below. Contact Andy Stevens at StevensRobertA (at) JohnDeere.com if interested.

Responsibilities:
· Manage telematics data collected from farm research studies
· Process and statistically analyze telematics data from agricultural equipment to quantify work performed and discover insights
· Create reports and presentations of statistical analysis

Basic Qualifications:
· Pursuing Bachelors Degree in Statistics and/or Computer Science
· Coursework in statistical analysis and programming
· Experience statistical graphics, statistical model building, and data mining with the R statistical programming language
· Experience in Linux and Linux cluster system administration
· Ability to write and execute scripting programs to automate workflow
· Ability to use Microsoft Office projects Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to document and communicate results
· Quick learner eager to explore new approaches to speed up routine analysis and apply new, insightful analysis methods

Preferred Qualifications:
· Pursuing MS or Doctorate in Statistics and/or Computer Science
· Advanced knowledge of data mining and machine learning using the R statistical programming language
· Knowledge of Apache Hadoop and associated packages for databases and statistics
· Experience managing databases and writing SQL queries
· Knowledge of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
· Knowledge of agriculture and agricultural equipment