EXPOSED
The mechanical core of the job — writing R/SAS/Python analysis scripts, running regressions and survival models, cleaning datasets, generating tables and figures, drafting methods sections — is exactly what current models do at usable quality, and fast. What resists is upstream and downstream: designing an experiment or sampling frame that can actually answer the question, defending assumptions when the data violate them, and putting your name on an inference that a regulator, court, or executive will act on. The modal statistician (biostatistics, government survey work, market research support) still spends a large share of hours on the automatable middle, which is why this lands squarely in EXPOSED rather than safe.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. A 9 reflects the split: model fitting, multiple-imputation runs, table shells, and CDISC/ADaM dataset production are already machine-generatable, while sample-size justification for a Phase III protocol, choosing a variance estimator for a complex multistage survey design, and diagnosing why a proportional-hazards assumption fails in the data you actually have still require someone who understands the study, not just the file.
Fully desk- and screen-based. A 2 rather than 0 only because some statisticians walk to a lab or clinic to see how measurements are actually recorded, or sit in on a data-monitoring committee in person; the work itself is a laptop, a compute cluster, and a version-controlled repo.
Certification preferred, not legally required. At 5 you have credentials that matter socially — a PhD, ASA Accredited Statistician, SAS/ASQ certifications — but no state licence bars anyone else from running the analysis, and when an FDA submission or a court's Daubert challenge goes badly the sponsor, the PI, or the testifying expert absorbs it rather than the staff statistician who wrote the SAP.
Some relationship component. An 8 covers the real but replaceable relationships: the clinical team, program office, or product manager who has learned your analyses hold up and brings you the messy question early, which buys you consulting hours no anonymous vendor gets — but the deliverable is a defensible number, and a new hire with the same methods can inherit the client.
Meaningful discretion. A 13 is earned by calls that have no procedure — declaring an interim futility boundary crossed, deciding whether nonresponse in a survey wave is ignorable, choosing whether to pool sites with sparse events — decisions a reviewer will second-guess and that move drug approvals or published federal estimates, but stopping short of 14+ because most of those calls are pre-specified in an SAP or a documented methodology, reviewed by a senior statistician, and signed off by someone above you.
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