Tableau Research (research.tableau.com) is a small, industrial research team focused on Tableau’s mission of helping people see and understand data. As part of Tableau’s Office of the CTO (OCTO), we work to be a source of new and inspiring product and technology directions for Tableau each year, generating ideas that influence, drive or significantly change what Tableau delivers to customers. As a research lab, we aim to both provide value to Tableau and to establish ourselves as a place to do world-class research.

We are seeking a people manager and creative leader eager to help us drive innovation across Tableau and Salesforce. As a manager, you will have the opportunity to oversee the work of a small group of research scientists and help them achieve success.  As a leader, you will work in partnership with other OCTO leaders to ensure the overall success of Tableau Research and OCTO.

Who you are:

• People leader.  You have experience helping others develop their careers and achieve their goals. You know how to listen and engage others in order to bring about their best work.
• Research generalist. You are broadly knowledgeable about performing research in Computer Science domains such as data visualization, HCI, applied ML/AI, and NLP. You demonstrate a track record in developing interesting, new ideas into concrete results as research papers, prototypes, and / or product.
• Innovative. You have a genuine interest in Tableau’s mission, and a passion for using data and the know-how to create modern, cutting-edge content. You enjoy working directly with research ideas and technology, to deeply understand their value.
• Creative. You possess a special blend of creative vision and organization sense. You are able to inspire and lead a team, coming up with creative solutions for research to be impactful. You are comfortable with handling imprecise and changing goals, while helping the team succeed through thoughtful ideation, problem solving, and organizational support.
• Collaborative. You have excellent communication skills and enjoy collaborating with people at all levels and across multiple disciplines. You know how to organize and coordinate informal teams of self-motivated people and help them achieve success.
• Research advocate. You can communicate the value of research ideas, distilling the technical detail into compelling stories. You enjoy working across the company to find the right connections for both researchers and their ideas.

What you’ll be doing:

As a member of Tableau Research you will have the opportunity to help drive innovation across Tableau and Salesforce. As an OCTO leader, you can help create and support the organization that will help us all.  To do this, we expect you to:

• Support people: Manage a small, multi-disciplinary  group of research scientists working individually for success. Actively coach team members through regular conversations on how they are developing, impacting and performing against their goals.
• Develop strategy: Help create a strong, strategic portfolio of research projects and activities for Tableau Research. Coach your team members to craft their own research projects and activities to meet these goals.
• Drive impact:  Be a strong advocate for research projects, drive excitement about bringing researchers to work and engage across TR, OCTO, and product teams.  Work with OCTO leadership to build the practices and partnerships needed to help OCTO drive innovation across the company.
• Experiment and explore: Actively engage in research or technical innovation projects as a leader or strong contributor. This can include continuing to perform and publish your own research.
• Build external connections: Be an active member of one or more research or technical communities to build connections, influence, and support hiring.
• Build the team: Recruit and hire new research talent. Help define key needs within the team, drive the hiring process. Participate in hiring processes across OCTO as needed.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years working as a research scientist in a Computer Science field, or related field. This work experience typically includes performing and publishing your own research work at top computer science conferences. Note that we are not considering user researchers or data scientists at this time.
• Demonstrated ability to help highly-individual, self-motivated people succeed and help advise on the problems to solve that demonstrate impact and value.
  Ideally experience as a people manager, but strong contributions as a technical lead also qualify.
• Skilled at distilling and explaining novel and complex ideas. Able to demonstrate these skills by giving a technical talk as part of the interview process.
• Experience collaborating with teams developing new products and features.