Independent Contractor Political Science Jobs in Romeoville, IL

Bully Pulpit International is an outcomes agency made up of strategists, data scientists, and artists. We come from politics, brands, and government and we communicate without barriers and measure what matters. We have more than 400 team members in six countries and thirteen offices - Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, D.C., London, Los Angeles, New York, Oslo, San Francisco, and Zurich. We apply our unique expertise across strategic communications, public affairs, research, and digital marketing to create sophisticated and customized strategies that make change possible for both American and European clients.

• Starting Salary Range: $90,000 - $100,000 (+ annual bonus)
• Location: Expectation to work from DC, New York, Chicago, SF or LA offices at least 3 days a week

The Impact You Will Make

In this role, you'll lead projects using targeting, measurement, and competitive reporting to run more effective campaigns for corporate public affairs clients, while helping to advance our data science capabilities:

Driving integrated analytics projects: You'll independently lead analytics efforts across complex client accounts - defining target audiences, measuring what works to persuade them, and tracking what other campaigns and news they're seeing to help clients understand market dynamics.

Advancing our capabilities with new data and techniques: You'll improve our suite of data science offerings using AI tools and new methodologies to run more effective campaigns and deliver deeper insights to our clients.

Consulting and project management: You'll own the execution of entire workstreams, coordinating between clients and teams (including other specialty teams at BPI) and refining internal processes to work more efficiently and effectively.

What the Day-to-Day Looks Like

• Design and execute experiments to measure the impact of public affairs and reputational advertising campaigns using surveys with RCT and causal inference methodologies.
• Identify and build target audiences from varied data sources and analyze channel consumption habits and then blend that data with opinion data to build a comprehensive understanding of our audiences.
• Translate complex statistical concepts and data into polished, client-ready decks and memos for non-technical stakeholders, including visualizing data.
• Leverage statistics, predictive models, and advanced analytical tools like machine learning to analyze audience engagement and derive insights from news and social media monitoring.
• Experiment with new data sources and AI tools to enhance deliverables and scale repeatable team tasks.
• Coordinate project timelines and workflows across cross-functional internal teams.

Requirements

What You Bring

• At least 4 years of analytics and data science experience. Experience in public affairs, corporate data, or political campaigns is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated expertise in R or Python for analyzing datasets, writing clean analysis scripts, and building visualizations and analysis deliverables.
• Experience using SQL to filter, process, and prepare data.
• Experience working with outputs from statistical models, predictive analytics, or causal inference to solve client problems and articulate results in plain language.
• Strong visual polish and communication skills, with a proven ability to translate complex data into clear, client-ready narratives.
• A collaborative mindset with a track record of supporting teammates informally on a peer-to-peer level (formal direct report management or structured training experience is not required).
• A product-focused mindset with an interest in scaling one-off tasks into standardized workflows or tools alongside engineering teams.
• Strong data intuition, critical thinking, and first-principles problem-solving abilities.

Benefits

BPI offers a wide range of benefits to U.S.-based employees, including 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) program with employer match up to 4%, generous time off for vacation, $50 monthly phone reimbursement, unlimited sick time, and 16 weeks of paid leave for new parents. BPI's benefits prioritize employee wellness and progressive support to our diverse workforce.

We're looking for all kinds of people.  

BPI Group is an integrated public affairs agency that delivers outcomes for the top organizations and leaders around the world. With expertise in strategic communications, digital marketing, creative, research, and measurement, we offer a cohesive approach across corporate, policy, and public affairs strategy in today's interconnected world. By combining incisive strategy and deep tactical expertise, we make change possible. Our transatlantic presence includes offices across eleven markets in the US and Europe.

We are an equal opportunity employer and make employment decisions based on individual commitment to excellence. We want to have the best qualified people in every job. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, status as a protected veteran, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics (or those of a family member) or any other consideration made unlawful by applicable federal, state or local laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. 
BPI is dedicated to building an inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible workplace that fosters a sense of belonging - so if you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to still consider submitting an application. We consider applications holistically and you may be just the right candidate for this role or another one of our openings!

Let's keep in touch. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter at bpigroup.com